Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/601

Rh Mexicans, and I will capture them before twenty-four hours if I live."

I started one man back to camp to tell Lieut. Jackson to take the trail direct for Aw-wa-col-i-enthy, which in English means hot water, (Agua Caliente).

Lieut. Jackson had become over anxious as soon as we left and had started after us with one company of cavalry. My messenger met him five miles from the Davis ranch, and there he turned in the direction of Agua Caliente.

In starting out from the ranch I took the trail of the stock, and after we had gone quite a distance I called George to my side and told him it was not Indians we were following, but a crowd of cut- throat Greasers, and we didn't want to have a fight with them until the soldiers arrived if we could help it, but that we would fight them before we would allow them to escape.

I had never told George until now what all they had done, and when I related to him the whole affair he said: "We will not allow one of them to escape." We could see that they were turning in the direction of Agua Caliente and had made this circuit merely to throw any one off that might attempt to follow.

This was what I thought when I dispatched the Lieutenant to come to Hot Springs.

It was twenty-seven miles straight through on the road from the Davis ranch to Agua Caliente, but the way we went that night we supposed it was about forty miles, making sixty miles that we had to ride that night, while the soldiers if they started direct from camp would only have to travel thirty-five miles.