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There were mesquites on the ridge, and I sought the shade beneath them. It was the noon hour, with hot, glary sun and no wind. Here I had to have out my fight. If ever in my varied life of exciting adventure I strove to think, to understand myself, to see through difficulties, I assuredly strove then.
This movement had taken the savages by surprise. The lad darted into the mesquites, running with head low. Bullets buzzed about him, kicking up clouds of dust at his feet. Arrows whistled after him. A yell went up from the Apaches. "Will he make it?" groaned the father, in an agonized voice. "Doubt it," said the guard.
During the whole of that day we toiled, riding as hard as we could over the almost trackless canyon floor; trailing through deep sand; climbing over masses of boulders that freshets or cloud-bursts had. piled between the walls; forcing our way through dense willows; scratched by thickets of mesquites. Again and again in the walls were seen cliff-dwellings and corn storage houses.
They were nearly out of the mesquites when One-eye uttered a quick, sharp, low-voiced whine, which his master seemed to understand. It is not every dog that can whine in the Nez Percé dialect, but the boy at once dropped upon his hands and knees and crept silently forward.
The afternoon passed like the morning, in ceaseless winding and twisting and climbing along this abandoned trail. Gale saw many waterholes, mostly dry, some containing water, all of them catch-basins, full only after rainy season. Little ugly bunched bushes, that Gale scarcely recognized as mesquites, grew near these holes; also stunted greasewood and prickly pear.
"I never heard nothin' but the song-bird in the bush and the zephyr skallyhootin' across the peaceful dell." In ten minutes Taylor remarked: "I see the dust of a wagon risin' right above the fur end of the flat." "You have verree good eyes, senor," said Gregorio, smiling. Two miles away they saw a faint cloud dimming the green ripples of the mesquites.
Make every shot count, fo' if we don't scattah the Apaches at the first chahge, we will be at a big disadvantage!" It was a desperate situation, with the odds nearly five to one against them. Reaching the pass, they could look down on the battle from the cover of the mesquites. From the overturned stage, thin jets of fire streaked steadily, and a pall of white smoke hung over it like a cloud.
About both sides of the trail at this point grew great thickets of brush paloverde, the darker mesquites, and grotesque bunches of prickly pear. One of the bronchos suddenly reared backward. "Steady, yuh ornery " the driver began. He did not finish. There was a sharp twang! An arrow whistled out of the mesquites and buried itself in the side of the coach nearly to the feather!
They had taken a low, homely little house, standing under its mesquite-tree, close to the government reservation, where the flagstaff stood, and the cannon boomed at sundown, and the soldiers walked their posts. Back of the house there was a thicket of mesquites, and through this a path ran down to the river. The first thing people mistrusted about Sylvia was her father.
There was evidence of the fact that at flood seasons the water had an outlet into the arroyo. The soil appeared to be a fine sand, in which a reddish tinge predominated; and it was abundantly covered with a long grass, still partly green. Mesquites and palo verdes dotted the arroyo and gradually closed in thickets that obstructed the view. "Shore it all beats me," exclaimed Ladd.
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