For weapons they had the tomahawk pipe of bronze, and scalping knife, one or two bows and arrows, the lustre of the black strings showing human hair was twisted in them as a trophy; the guns were not very good, being cast-off army pieces, for which they had powder horns and bullet bags, quite old fashioned. Their spears were left without; they had rawhide whips hanging by a loop to the wrist, and ornamented usefully with a war whistle for the issue of commands, more clearly sounded and distantly heard than by voice, a system known among the Southern Indians from time out of mind though only of recent years adopted by European armies.
Strange and picturesque to the Englishman, though their odour of smoke and rancid grease and horses would have been less unendurable in the open air, Gladsden owned that they were manly fellows enough who inspired reasonable respect and almost consideration.
Unfortunately for appearances, whatever their nation may have been in ancient days, now these Apaches are about the most plundering, murderous, ferocious rovers of the Southwest, especially hating all the whites. Liars and thieves, they are a scourge who must be crushed out by the civilisation to which they will not truly bow the knee.
Whilst these unpleasant guests smoked and drank, our friends pretended to doze. Camote would have liked to have shut up shop; but he was not the man, with only two assistants, to undertake to clear out the horde before he retired to his virtuous pillow. The mere prospective of a wrangle with these ugly customers made his hair imprudently rise like a cockatoo's crest. He sat up on his counter, with dangling legs that swung in concord with his agitation, with folded arms to look undaunted, but not losing sight of the reds. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and gulped large draughts of _pulque_ by way of consolation and to nourish his patience.
Meanwhile the night advanced; the stars were paling away in the celestial depths, and the moon "downing." It was nearly three in the morning, and yet the humbler Indians and the numerous horses without hardly betrayed their proximity by a sound. For upwards of three hours the Apaches had gone on smoking and imbibing without their hard heads giving way or any tongue being loosened.