"They came in sight early this morning just after we had had breakfast
and had broken camp. The four of us--'Bunt,' 'Idaho,' Estorijo and
myself--were jogging on to the southward and had just come up out of the
dry bed of some water-hole--the alkali was white as snow in the
crevices--when Idaho pointed them out to us, three to the rear, two on
one side, one on the other and--very far away--two ahead. Five minutes
before, the desert was as empty as the flat of my hand. They seemed
literally to have _grown_ out of the sage-brush. We took them in through
my field-glasses and Bunt made sure they were an outlying band of
Hunt-in-the-Morning's Bucks. I had thought, and so had all of us, that
the rest of the boys had rounded up the whole of the old man's hostiles
long since. We are at a loss to account for these fellows here. They
seem to be well mounted.
"We held a council of war from the saddle without halting, but there
seemed very little to be done--but to go right along and wait for
developments. At about eleven we found water--just a pocket in the bed
of a dried stream--and stopped to water the ponies. I am writing this
during the halt.
"We have one hundred and sixteen rifle cartridges. Yesterday was Friday,
and all day, as the newspapers say, 'the situation remained unchanged.'
We expected surely that the night would see some rather radical change,
but nothing happened, though we stood watch and watch till morning.
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