"Thank you. Thank you, captain," said the colonel. "Sam, get all the bugles you can. Give a horse for a bugle. Give anything!"
The captain at once rode into Mexico for a talk with Colonel Romero. There was, indeed, an over-supply of musical instruments in that command, and its gallant colonel sympathized impressively with the feelings of Cal's father and friends. So did two militiamen who were happy enough to own unnecessary bugles. Sam Herrick did not give a horse for either, but one battered, crooked tube of sheet brass brought enough money to replace it with a new one at least half silver.
Captain Moore hardly needed to explain so simple a plan. He had tried it twice, he said, for stray men of his own, and in each case they had ridden safely in. Neither he nor Colonel Evans guessed that Cal had already ridden away beyond the stretch of chaparral in which they proposed to toot for him.
HOW PING AND TAH-NU-NU GOT TO THE SPRING.
Colonel Romero and his gay lancers and his picturesque ranchero militia rode away along the well-marked trail so carefully left for them by the Apaches. It led manifestly into their own republic, and there seemed to be no danger whatever of their losing it. They had two bugles less than when they entered the chaparral, but they made noise enough to notify any red men lurking in the bushes ahead of them that they were coming. The one special precaution which they continually took was against possible ambuscades. They were determined not to be taken by surprise, and their wary scouts routed out a considerable number of jackass rabbits and sage-hens. Beyond these they met with no excitement whatever until they came to the barren gravel patch, beyond which the Apache trail did not go.
Here a halt was called--necessarily. The pride of a Mexican army officer, and of a round score of them, was in the way of going back to Cold Spring to tell some Americans of a kind of defeat. It was talked over, and a decision was wisely reached. The Apaches, it was concluded, had not gone down into the earth nor up into the air. They had scattered through different paths of the chaparral, to come together again at some point farther on--probably at the outer edge of it. Kah-go-mish would have fully approved of that piece of sagacity, for it sent the Mexican part of the forces pursuing him a number of miles farther into Mexico. As for that cunning Apache himself, he seemed a model of human patience. The sage-hen had at last deserted him. She had seen the Mexicans depart, and that was enough for her. Perhaps she knew of other old chaparral ladies like herself to whom she wished to tell the latest news.