Their purpose was altogether different from that of Captain Shindle and the others, for they could not hope to accomplish anything effective against the hostiles: they were aiming to help Maurice Freeman to recover his boy.
As the lieutenant had stated, Mendez knew and told him that the father would do precisely what he did do, and that, unless he was checked, he would fall a victim to Apache ferocity, without affording the slightest aid to his child. Freeman had made the natural mistake of believing the hostiles would rendezvous at a point much further in advance than they did. Some of their scouts would be there, on the watch for the approach of the whites, and the chance of the father’s circumventing them was as one in a million.
The lieutenant and the scout, having completed all they could do in the way of diverting the suspicion of the Apaches, now gave their whole energy to the help of the stricken parent.
The whole question narrowed down to that of the whereabouts of the captive, and whether it was possible to secure possession of him unharmed. Mendez suspected that Maroz and Ceballos, with probably one or two companions, were at the advanced position referred to, but whether they retained the immediate custody of the child, or had sent him further into the mountains with the main band, or had put him to death, were questions which could be answered only by personal investigation.
The natural conclusion was that the first proceeding of the leaders in the outbreak would be to send the child away from them, not only as a surer means against his recapture, but to leave his abductors untrammeled in their movements. Such, I say, was the natural theory, but the sagacious Mendez saw a reason for hoping that the reverse was the case; in other words, that matters were just as it was desired they should be.
Maroz was irrestrainable in his ferocity when aroused. No crueler savage ever lived. He carried off little Fulton Freeman, because he saw the chance of torturing his parents’ hearts with deeper grief by doing so than by driving a bullet through his brain. He helped to shoot down the children of Captain Murray, because their father and mother fell during the opening of the scrimmage, and, therefore, they could not be distressed further; but he recognized the son of Freeman and saw his opportunity.