preferring to trust the chances of being captured by the Apaches to losing the package. The night was clear, and the full moon lighted up the landscape so that everything of any size for miles around was almost as distinctly visible as at midday. I had ridden at a gallop some ten or twelve miles, when I saw the package, lying beside the road, under a scrub mesquite-tree, which had raked it off, as the mule ran under it. Dismounting, I secured the package upon the back of my saddle, and, having tightened the cinch, was just mounting again for the return to the station, when my horse gave a loud snort and jumped backward, looking up the road toward Tucson, with staring eyes, nostrils distended, and ears pricked sharply forward. I knew what this meant in Apache Land, and was on his back in an instant, and out into an open space beyond the reach of arrows, which might be shot from behind any shrub or rock. Death haunts your steps, day and night, in that land of blood; and man and horse acquire habits of the most intense vigilance. Looking up the road in the direction indicated, I saw something moving along the trail, about a fourth of a mile distant, which looked like a small boy. Proper caution would have prompted me to turn and ride straight back to the station; but just then I remembered that we had seen, some distance back upon the trail, the foot-prints of a human being—apparently those of a little boy—in the dust of the road; and noticed that they finally left the track and turned away into the chaparral. There were no other footprints with them; and this fact, in such a locality, had caused us to
