The Apaches, who had probably made their cruel journey without flasks, seemed for the moment insatiable and utterly reckless.  Many of them rolled off their tottering ponies into the rivulet, and plunging down their heads drank like beasts.  There were a few minutes of the strangest peace that ever was seen.  It was in vain that two or three of the hardier or fiercer Chiefs and braves shouted and gestured to their comrades, as if urging them to commence the attack.  Manga Colorada, absorbed by a thirst which was more burning than revenge, did not at first see the slayer of his boy, and when he did could not move toward him because of fevered mustangs, who would not budge from their drinking, or who were staggering blind with hunger.  Thurstane, keeping his horse beside Clara’s, watched the lean figure and restless, irritable face of Delgadito, not ten yards distant.  Mrs. Stanley had halted helplessly so near an Apache boy that he might have thrust her through with his lance had he not been solely intent upon water.

It was fortunate for the emigrants that they had reached the stream a few seconds the sooner.  Their thirst was first satiated; and then men and animals began to draw away from their enemies; for even the mules of white men instinctively dread and detest the red warriors.  This movement was accelerated by Thurstane, Coronado, Texas Smith, and Sergeant Meyer calling to one and another in English and Spanish, “This way! this way!” There seemed to be a chance of massing the party and getting it to some distance before the Indians could turn their thoughts to blood.

But the manoeuvre was only in part accomplished when battle commenced.  Little Sweeny, finding that his mule was being crowded by an Apache’s horse, uttered some indignant yelps.  “Och, ye bloody naygur!  Get away wid yerself.  Get over there where ye b’long.”

This request not being heeded, he made a clumsy punch with his bayonet and brought the blood.  The warrior uttered a grunt of pain, cast a surprised angry stare at the shaveling of a Paddy, and thrust with his lance.  But he was probably weak and faint; the weapon merely tore the uniform.  Sweeny instantly fired, and brought down another Apache, quite accidentally.  Then, banging his mule with his heels, he splashed up to Thurstane with the explanation, “Liftinant, they’re the same bloody naygurs.  Wan av um made a poke at me, Liftinant.”

“Load your beece!” ordered Sergeant Meyer sternly, “und face the enemy.”

By this time there was a fierce confusion of plungings and outcries.  Then came a hiss of arrows, followed instantaneously by the scream of a wounded man, the report of several muskets, a pinging of balls, more yells of wounded, and the splash of an Apache in the water.  The little streamlet, lately all crystal and sunshine, was now turbid and bloody.  The giant portals of the canon, although more than a mile distant, sent back echoes of the musketry.  Another battle rendered more horrible the stark, eternal horror of the desert.