answers Geronimo.

"'I can't take all those hosses with me; I believe they're stolen!' says
the General.

"'My people cannot go without their hosses,' says Geronimo.

"So, across the line they goes, and back to the reservation. In about a
week there's fifty-two frantic Greasers wanting to know where's their
hosses. The army is nothing but an importer of stolen stock, and knows
it, and can't help it.

"Well, as I says, I'm between Camp Apache and the Mexican line, so that
every raiding party goes right on past me. The point is that I'm a
thousand feet or so above the valley, and the renegades is in such a
hurry about that time that they never stop to climb up and collect me.
Often I've watched them trailing down the valley in a cloud of dust.
Then, in a day or two, a squad of soldiers would come up and camp at my
spring for a while. They used to send soldiers to guard every water hole
in the country so the renegades couldn't get water. After a while, from
not being bothered none, I got to thinking I wasn't worth while with
them.

"Me and Johnny Hooper were pecking away at the Ole Virginia mine then.
We'd got down about sixty feet, all timbered, and was thinking of
crosscutting. One day Johnny went to town, and that same day I got in a
hurry and left my gun at camp.

"I worked all the morning down at the bottom of the shaft, and when I
see by the sun it was getting along towards noon, I put in three good
shots, tamped 'em down, lit the fuses, and started to climb out.

"It ain't noways pleasant to light a fuse in a shaft, and then have to
climb out a fifty-foot ladder, with it burning behind you. I never did
get used to it. You keep thinking, 'Now, suppose there's a flaw in that
fuse, or something, and she goes off in six seconds instead of two
minutes? Where'll you be then?' It would give you a good boost towards
your home on high, anyway.

"So I climbed fast, and stuck my head out the top without looking--and
then I froze solid enough. There, about fifty feet away, climbing up
the hill on mighty tired hosses, was a dozen of the ugliest Chiricahuas
you ever don't want to meet, and in addition a Mexican renegade named
Maria, who was worse than any of 'em. I see at once their hosses was
tired out, and they had a notion of camping at my water hole, not
knowing nothing about the Ole Virginia mine.

"For two bits I'd have let go all holts and dropped backwards, trusting
to my thick head for easy lighting. Then I he