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Seven or eight miles beyond San Juan, we found that the waters of the arroyo had risen so as to inundate a wide valley which we were compelled to cross.
Off to the east Red barred them from creeping down the arroyo, and from where Pete was he could creep up to within sixty yards if he chose the right rocks. The ranges varied from four hundred yards for Buck to sixty for Pete, and the others averaged close to three hundred, which allowed very good shooting on both sides.
At mid-day we reached an arroyo a clear, cool stream that gurgled along under a thick grove of the palma redonda. Here we "nooned", stretching our bodies along the green-sward.
"It was about here," I announced, "that the arroyo opened out into the Laguna Dulce, a little fresh water pool where Richardson's Indians delighted to take a cold plunge on leaving their steaming temescal." "Richardson? Hardly a Spanish name!" "No, but a Spaniard by naturalization and marriage.
Their directions were simple, but sufficient: "Keep down the arroyo for fifteen miles till you get there." Both being strangers from afar, young, spirited, and thus thrown together by chance for a long ride, it is likely that the comradeship that afterward existed so strongly between them began that afternoon as they meandered along the little valley of the Canada Verda.
When Norton said "Ready," they were ready; when he jumped to his feet and ran down toward the arroyo, they ran with him. A shout of laughter went up from each side of the dry water-course as jeering voices announced triumphantly that the Gringoes were afraid. And with the shouts came rifle-shots.
The Kid turned the speckled roan's head up the ten-mile pear flat that stretches along the Arroyo Hondo until it ends at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio.
"It's me," said Overland, still concealed. "Thought I quit you, eh? Are them fellas out of sight yet?" "No. They're still in sight. They are too far to see anything, though." "And you can see them all right, son? That don't figure out correct." Winthrop laughed. "That's so. Where's the burro?" "He's hid right in plain sight up a little arroyo."
But he followed his advice about taking the Coyote trail, and the following day when he made the trip to Dry Bottom he returned that way. About half way between Dry Bottom and the Circle Bar he came upon a little adobe cabin snuggling an arroyo through which trickled a small stream of water.
It was Berkeley Fresno who retreated cautiously from the shelter of a thicket a hundred yards up the arroyo and started briskly homeward, congratulating himself upon the impulse that had decided him to follow the training partners upon their daily routine. He made directly for the corral. "Which I don't consider there's no consideration comin' to him whatever," said Willie that evening.
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