Coronado spurred his horse down the rough, disjointed, slippery declivity, and the others followed.  They were soon perceived; the Apache swarm was instantly in a buzz; horses were saddled and mounted, or mounted without saddling; there was a consultation, and then a wild dash toward the travellers.  As the two parties neared each other at a gallop, Coronado rode to the front of his squad, waving his sombrero.  An Indian who wore the dress of a Mexican caballero, jacket, loose trousers, hat, and boots, spurred in like manner to the front, gestured to his followers to halt, brought his horse to a walk, and slowly approached the white man.  Coronado made a sign to show that his pistols were in his holsters; and the Apache responded by dropping his lance and slinging his bow over his shoulder.  The two met midway between the two squads of staring, silent horsemen.

“Is it Manga Colorada?” asked the Mexican, in Spanish.

“Manga Colorada,” replied the Apache, his long, dark, haggard, savage face lighting up for a moment with a smile of gratified vanity.

“I come in peace, then,” said Coronado.  “I want your help; I will pay for it.”

In our account of this interview we shall translate the broken Spanish of the Indian into ordinary English.

“Manga Colorada will help,” he said, “if the pay is good.”

Even during this short dialogue the Apaches had with difficulty restrained their curiosity; and their little wiry horses were now caracoling, rearing, and plunging in close proximity to the two speakers.

“We will talk of this by ourselves,” said Coronado.  “Let us go to your camp.”

The conjoint movement of the leaders toward the Indian bivouac was a signal for their followers to mingle and exchange greetings.  The adventurers were enveloped and very nearly ridden down by over two hundred prancing, screaming horsemen, shouting to their visitors in their own guttural tongue or in broken Spanish, and enforcing their wild speech with vehement gestures.  It was a pandemonium which horribly frightened the Mexican rancheros, and made Coronado’s dark cheek turn to an ashy yellow.

The civilized imagination can hardly conceive such a tableau of savagery as that presented by these Arabs of the great American desert.  Arabs!  The similitude is a calumny on the descendants of Ishmael; the fiercest Bedouin are refined and mild compared with the Apaches.  Even the brutal and criminal classes of civilization, the pugilists, roughs, burglars, and pickpockets of our large cities, the men whose daily life is rebellion against conscience, commandment, and justice, offer a gentler and nobler type of character and expression than these “children of nature.”  There was hardly a face among that gang of wild riders which did not outdo the face of Texas Smith in degraded ferocity.  Almost every man and boy was obviously a liar, a thief, and a murderer.  The air of beastly cruelty was made even more hateful by an air of beastly cunning.  Taking color, brutality, grotesqueness, and filth together, it seemed as if here were a mob of those malignant and ill-favored devils whom Dante has described and the art of his age has painted and sculptured.