war-chiefs, whipped out his knife. The sound of the blade as it rent
the canvas was drowned by the other noises, and when Lieutenant Bascom
and his breathless troopers surveyed their bound captives Cochise was
in full flight across the darkened plain.

Now word was sent by courier to the agency, and government runners
went forth that night to all parts of the reservation, but they found
no Indians to receive their messages. The Chiracahua Apaches were
already riding toward their mountains where Mangus Colorado and the
renegade members of their tribe were biding on the heights, like
eagles resting on the rocky peaks before they take their next flight.

Like roosting eagles the warriors of Mangus Colorado scanned the wide
plains beneath the mountains. Their eyes went to the ragged summits of
the ranges beyond. Now as the day was creeping across the long, flat
reaches of the Sulphur Springs valley, tipping the scarred crests of
the Dragoons with light off to the west, touching the distant northern
pinnacles of the Grahams with throbbing radiance, one of these
lookouts beheld a thread of smoke unraveling against the bright
morning sky.

Under the newly-risen sun Cochise and his followers were traveling
hard away off there to the northward. The turbaned warriors came on
first, half-naked, armed some of them with lances, some with bows and
poisoned arrows, and a goodly number bearing rifles. Their lank brown
legs moved ceaselessly in rhythm with the trotting of the little
ponies; their moccasined heels thudded against the flanks of the
animals.

In the rear of the column the squaws rode with the children and the
scanty baggage. As they traveled thus, an outrider departed from the
column to leave his horse upon an arid slope and climb afoot among the
rocks above until he stood outlined against the clear hot sky,
kindling a wisp of flame. Now he bent over the fire, casting bits of
powdered resin upon the blaze, holding a square of tattered blanket
over it after the first puff of black smoke had risen, feeding it then
with a scattering of green leaves which in their turn gave forth a
cloud of white fumes.

And so the smoke thread unwound its length, showing itself in black
and white; spelling forth, by the same system of dot and dash which
the white man employs in his telegraph, the tidings of what had taken
place back there in the Sibley tent.

From his nook in the Chiracahuas the watching warrior read its
message. And