effords had mixed a great deal with Apaches of various
tribes, until he knew their customs as well as they did themselves. He
could speak their tongue and he knew the sign language which was the
lingua Franca of the western tribes. He could read smoke signals; he
had made friends among those of the renegades who sometimes took a
long chance and drifted down to the government posts in company with
peaceful Indians. Gradually he got such information as he could, and
as he got it he stored it away in his mind until he felt he was as
well equipped with knowledge as he could hope.

Then he set forth one day to pay a visit to Cochise in person. It was
a risky venture but the old-timers never balked at taking long
chances; else they would never have come west of the Rio Grande.
Jeffords induced an Apache who had been with Cochise to accompany him
part way on the journey; and before the Indian back-tracked for the
military post, he had him send up a smoke signal announcing the visit
and stating that its nature was peaceable.

When the last shreds of smoke vanished in the clear sky the native
departed and Jeffords resumed his journey toward the Dragoons. No
answering sign had come from those scarred granite peaks; and as he
rode on across the blazing plain they stood forth against the
cloudless sky, frowning, inscrutable. For all that the eye could see
they might have been deserted, without life among them since the
beginning of time; or they might be at this moment sheltering hundreds
of biding enemies. He had to wait until he got among those rocks
before he knew what they held in store for him.

He rode to the edge of the plain and from the lowlands up the first
slopes of talus at the mouth of a long, steep-walled canyon. He pressed
his horse on up the narrow gorge. On either side the cliffs loomed
above him; in places they were so close together that he could have
tossed a pebble from one to the other. There was no sign of life; no
sound, no movement.

But this tall lean rider knew that somewhere among those granite
pinnacles which stood out against the sky-line before him and on
either side, scores of venomous black eyes were watching him. He knew
that for every pair of eyes there was a rifle; and that many a crooked
brown finger was fairly itching to press the trigger.

Thus he rode his sweating pony up and up where the gorge wound toward
the summit, up and up until he reached the nests of enormous granite
boulders wh