Patience closed her eyes. "Yes," she sighed.

Hank scratched his head and frowned, very much puzzled. "Shucks! thar ain't no doubt 'bout it, a-tall. Course it is--an' I'm a danged old fool!"

"You're one of the four best men I ever knew," said Patience, resting her hand on his arm.

Hank felt of the disgraceful, stubby beard on his face, scowled at his blackened hands, and furtively brushed at a bloodstain on his shirt.

Then he wheeled abruptly and strode off to look over the victims of the little affray. When he turned again he saw Patience and Tom going toward camp, Patience on her horse and Tom striding at her side. Fixing the strap to his own rifle he slung the weapon over his shoulder and, with the double-barreled weapon balanced expertly in his hands, slowly followed after to act as a badly needed protector to them both.

Back in camp Tom handed Patience into her uncle's care, looked at her in a way she would remember to the end of her days, and hastened on to report to the captain of the caravan. When he reached Woodson he found Hank there before him, laughingly recounting the fight. As Tom came up Hank stepped back and slipped away, heading straight for the excited group of tenderfeet at the other end of the encampment, and roughly pushed in among them.

"Look hyar, ye sick pups," he blurted. "My pardner da.s.sn't thrash any o'

ye, or he'll mebby lose his gal. Anybody hyar wantin' ter take advantage o' an old man? Huh! Then open yer dumb ears ter this: If I ketch airy one o' ye hangin' 'round Cooper's waggins, or even sayin' 'how-de-do'

to that gal, I'll git ye if I has ter chase ye all the way back ter Missoury!" He spat at the doctor's feet, turned his back and rambled over to where his trade goods were piled. On the way he met Zeb, who scowled at him.

Hank pulled some black mops out of his pocket, showed them, and shoved them back again.

"h.e.l.l!" said Zeb, enviously. "Whar ye git 'em?"

"Found one on a currant bush," chuckled Hank, and went on again.

Zeb placed his fists on his hips and scowled in earnest. "I didn't know what that shootin' war, with all th' hunters runnin' 'round. Dang him!

He allus _did_ have more luck ner brains!"

Up at the captain's wagon Woodson nodded as his companion finished speaking. "I reckon ye kin have 'most anythin' in this hyar camp, Boyd.

Two bars o' lead off'n th' cannon carriages, an' a keg o' powder? Sh.o.r.e, I'll put th' powder in Cooper's little waggin, an' ye kin help yerself ter th' lead when ye git th' time."

CHAPTER XVI

THE Pa.s.sING OF PEDRO

After supper that night Hank and Tom sat around their fire and soon were joined by Pedro, who paid them effusive compliments about their defeat of the Arapahoes. They squirmed under his heavy flattery and finally, in desperation, spoke of the secret trail to Taos. His face beamed in the firelight and he leaned eagerly forward.

"You have decide?" he asked.

"Yes," answered Tom. "Whar we goin' ter meet, and what time?"

"Ah?" breathed Pedro. "To that have I geeve _mucho_ thought. Eet should be ear-rly, so we be far away by thee coming of thee sun. Ees eet not so?"

"Naw," growled Hank. "Folks air not sleepin' sound enough then. n.o.body's goin' ter foller us. Thar'll be lots o' 'em leavin' camp at night from now on, tryin' ter beat each other ter th' customs fellers. Two hours afore dawn is time enough. But we got lots o' time ter figger that; we won't be ter th' Upper Spring fer two more days. Time enough then ter talk about it."

"But, eet ees tonight!" exclaimed Pedro. "_Madre de Dios!_ You teenk I mean near thee Upper Spreeng? No! No!"

"Mebby not; but that's whar _we_ mean," said Tom. "Think we're goin'

pokin' along through this Injun country fer two nights an' a day by ourselves? Th' caravan gits ter Willer Bar tomorrow night, an' camps at th' Upper Spring, or Cold Spring, th' next night. That puts us near fifty miles further on in th' protection of th' caravan."

"No! No!" argued Pedro in despair. "Eet ees too _mucho_ reesk!"

"Of what?" demanded Tom, in surprise.

"Eet may be that Armijo send _soldats_ to meet thee tr-rain, lak other times. Senores, eet mus' be tonight! Tonight eet mus' be!" He looked around suddenly. "But where ar-re thee _cargas_, thee packs? I do not see them. What ees eet you do?"

"We put 'em outside th' corral," chuckled Tom knowingly, "so folks will git used ter seeing 'em thar. Tomorrow night we'll do th' same, an' do it ag'in at th' Upper Spring. Somebody sh.o.r.e would see us if we had ter pack 'em here an' sneak 'em through th' camp. Ye should tell yer friends ter put thar packs outside th' waggins, too. How we goin' ter git through th' guards around th' camp?"

"By my fr-riends," answered Pedro. "But eet may be too late at Cold Spreeng!" he expostulated. "Eef thee _soldats_ ar-re there--ah, senores!

Eet ees ver' bad, Cold Spreeng!"

"We ain't botherin' 'bout that," said Tom rea.s.suringly. "Hank kin scout on ahead o' us, an' if thar camped up thar we kin drop out o' th' train behind any bend on th' way, an' take ter th' brush."

Pedro begged and pleaded, but to no avail. He still was arguing when his two companions rolled up in their blankets and settled down to go to sleep. Sadly he walked away, hiding his anger until well out of their sight, and then hastened to his own fire and sent three of his compatriots to watch the sleeping pair. They had their watch for nothing, and while they doggedly kept their eyes on the two plainsmen, Uncle Joe and his two wagoners were busy on the other side of the camp, stowing merchandise in the wagons and making false packs. This they found easy to do without calling upon many buffalo rugs, for the goods had been packed in light boxes, over which had been thrown skins and canvas. By taking out the contents of the boxes and putting the containers back into their original wrappings the shapes of the packs did not change. The pigs of lead, a keg of powder and bundles of stones were wrapped in pieces of old skins to give weight to the packs to keep them from flopping at every step of the mules. They did not start to work until Zeb Houghton and Jim Ogden returned from their tour of guard duty and took up another kind of guard duty near the wagons; and long before daylight awakened the encampment the work was done and no one the wiser. Alonzo Webb and Enoch Birdsall had taken care of the packs belonging to Ogden and Houghton and everything was in shape for quick action.

On the march again after an early breakfast the caravan plodded along the trail to reach Willow Bar in good time for the next night camp. As the wagons rolled along the road following the course of the Cimarron, Uncle Joe and Patience dropped back to the rear guard, where Hank Marshall scowled at Jim Ogden, but refrained from open hostilities.

Hank was glad to see them and entertained them mile after mile with accounts of his life and experiences in the great West. At times his imagination set a hard pace for his vocabulary, but the latter managed to keep up. The men exchanged tobacco off and on and no one gave a second thought to what they were doing. When Uncle Joe and Patience rode forward again as the train drew near to the noon camping place, Uncle Joe was poorer and lighter by the loss of a goodly sum in minted gold, while Hank was richer and heavier. The balance was obtainable in Santa Fe in the warehouse of a mutual friend.

The wagons hardly had left the noon camp when a heavy rain storm burst upon them, with a blast of cold air that quickly turned the rain into driving sheets of hail. These storms were common along the Cimarron and at times raged for two or three days. The animals became frantic with fear and pain, and the train was a scene of great confusion from one end to the other. Alternate downpours of rain, sleet, and heavy hailstones continued all the rest of the day and the encampment at Willow Bar was one of sullenness and discontent. The wind rose during the early part of the night and sent the rain driving into the wagons through every crack and crevice, and the flapping and slapping and booming of wagon covers, added to the fury of the wind and the swish of the downpour, filled the night with a tumult of noise. The guards around the camp either crawled under skins or crept back to their wagons, not able to see three feet in the blackness.

Tom and Hank had taken refuge under a great Pittsburg wagon owned by Haviland and had fastened buffalo rugs to its sides to shed some of the rain. As soon as darkness set in and Pedro's spies found that they could not see an arm's length from them and were drenched and half frozen by the steady downpour, they fled from their posts and sought refuge from the storm. It took very little to convince them that the men they were to watch would stay where they were until dawn or later, and they did not let Pedro know of their deflection.

"Nine, ten, eleven," muttered the first of two men leading packmules as they felt their way from wagon to wagon. "This oughter be Haviland's, Zeb. Yep, I kin feel thar skin walls." He bent down and raised the lower edge of a skin. "Hank! Tom!"

"All right, Jim," came the low answer, and the two partners, bundled in skins until they looked like nothing human, crawled from their snug shelter and stood up, their one and constant thought being for the covers of the hammers of their heavy rifles. Hank pushed ahead and the night swallowed up the little party.

Uncle Joe raised himself on one elbow and peered through a small opening in the canvas at the rear end of his first huge wagon, and got a faceful of cold rain before he could close the opening again. He had done this a dozen times since dark. Muttering sleepily he rolled up in his blankets and rugs and dozed again, squirming down into the warm bed as vague thoughts sped through his mind of what his friends were going to face.

Suddenly the soft whinny of a horse sounded squarely under him, and he bounced from the blankets and crept to a crack where the canvas was nailed to the tailboard of the wagon. "h.e.l.lo!" he called. "h.e.l.lo!"

A low voice answered him and he shivered as a trickle of cold rain rolled down his face. "Thought you had given it up till tomorrow night.

This is a h.e.l.l of a night, boys, to go wandering off from the camp. Sure you won't get lost among th' hills?" He chuckled at the reply and shivered again. "Sure I'll tell her Bent's. Yes. No, she won't. What?

Look here, young man; she's plumb cured of tenderfeet. Yes, I remember everything. All right; good luck, boys. G.o.d knows you'll need it!" He listened for a moment, heard no sounds of movement, and called again.

"What's th' matter?" There came no answer and he crept back to his blankets, his teeth chattering, and lay awake the rest of the night, worrying.

Between the wagons and the road the little pack train waited, kept together by soft bird calls instead of by sight. A plaintive, disheartened snipe whistled close by and was answered in kind. Hank almost b.u.mped into Ogden before he saw him. They both looked like drowned rats, the water slipping from the buffalo hair and pouring from them in little rills.

"Ain't a guard in sight, or ruther feelin', fifty feet each side o' th'

road," Hank reported. "Bet every blasted one o' 'em is back in camp.

Mules all tied together? Everybody hyar? All right. Off we go."

All night long the little _atejo_ slopped down the streaming road, kept to it by the uncanny instinct and the oft repeated cheeping and twittering of the adopted son of the Blackfeet, who could perfectly imitate any night bird he ever had heard; and he had heard them all.

Horses whinnied, mules brayed, wolves and coyotes howled, foxes squalled, chipmunks scolded, squirrels chattered and several other animals performed solos in the dark at the head of the little pack train, to be answered from the rear. Anyone unfortunate enough to be camped at the edge of the trail would have thought himself surrounded by a menagerie.

With the first sullen sign of dawn Tom pushed on ahead, reconnoitered the Upper Spring, found it deserted and went on, riding some hundreds of yards from, but parallel to, the trail and soon came to Cold Spring.

Here he saw quant.i.ties of camp and riding gear, abandoned firelocks, personal belongings, and other things "forgotten" by the brave Armijo and his army in their precipitate retreat from the Texans, while the latter were still one hundred and fifty miles away. Scouting in the vicinity for awhile he rode back and met the little _atejo_, which had been plodding steadily on at its pace of three miles an hour; and all the urging of which the men were capable would not increase that speed.

At the Upper Spring, which poured into a ravine and flowed toward the Cimarron a few miles to the north, the wagon road drew farther from the river and ran toward the Canadian; and here the little party left it to turn and twist over and around hills, ravines, pastures and woods, and then slopped down the middle of a storm-swollen rivulet. They turned up one of its small feeders and followed it for half a mile and then, crossing a little divide, struck another small brook and splashed down it until they came to the Cimarron. Here they threw into the river the useless contents of the false packs, distributed the supplies among the mules, and pushed on again upstream along the bank.

They now were well up on the headwaters of the river and its width was negligible, although its storm-fed torrent boiled and seethed and gave to it a false fierceness. Their doubling and the hiding of their trail in the streams had not been done so much for the purpose of throwing the Mexicans off their track, as to make their pursuers think they were trying to throw them off. They knew that the Mexicans, upon losing the tracks, would strike straight for the old and now almost abandoned Indian trail for Bent's Fort.