"Victoria," said her mother, almost laughing, "Cal is a smaller mark than your father, and not half so likely to get hit. I hope they will bring the horses back with them."
"You are a wonderful woman, mother. Were you ever really afraid of anything?"
Mrs. Evans thought for a moment, and then replied, "Yes, Vic, the other day. I was afraid we'd not get our soldier scarecrows ready before the Apaches came. Then, too, they might have met your father. I thought of that, but I wasn't really afraid that they had. I think I was made to live here."
That was the truth of the matter, and she soon convinced Victoria that the time to be nervous had not yet arrived. It was true that Colonel Evans and Cal and a dozen cowboys had gone with Captain Moore and the cavalry to trail the thieving Mescaleros and bring back the horses, but the Indians had three days the start, and were not likely to be caught up with at once.
"There may not be any fighting, even then," said Mrs. Evans; but Victoria did not find any use for her piano that day.
It was the very hour when Mrs. Evans and Vic were talking, at Santa Lucia, about the cavalry and cowboy expedition which had gone in search of the Apaches. Many a long mile to the southward of the old hacienda the sun shone hotly down upon the rugged slope of a spur of a range of mountains. At the bottom of the slope ran a wide trail which had been used by wagons, and was almost like a road. Along its narrow pathway of sand and shale rode a straggling cavalcade of extraordinary-looking horsemen. About half of them carried lances and wore a showy green and yellow uniform. All had firearms in abundance, and most of them had long sabres rattling at their sides. There seemed to be a profusion of silver ornaments, even on men as well as upon bridles and saddles, but there were also a number of badly battered sombreros and ragged serapes. What is a sombrero? It is any sort of very wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat, and can be made to carry much tinsel and feathers. As for a serape, one can be made out of any blanket by cutting a hole in the middle of it, so that it will hang gracefully around the man or woman whose head has been pushed through the hole. It was not easy to say whether the gay officer commanding the gaudy lancers, or the remarkably tattered peon who led the last string of pack-mules, at the rear, was really the most picturesque Mexican of that cavalcade.