“Not unless some one can go to La Paz for them.  Captain Bayard is going to see me after supper about a plan of his to retake them.”

“I wonder what officer he will send?”

“Perhaps I shall go.”

“Father could never stand the expense of sending them to the States, I suppose,” said Henry, despondently.

“They could easily be sent to the Missouri River without cost,” I observed.

“How, please?”

“There is a quartermaster’s train due here in a few weeks.  It would cost nothing to send the ponies by the wagon-master to Fort Union, and then they could be transferred to another train to Fort Leavenworth.”

“Frank, I’ve a scheme!” exclaimed the younger boy.

“What is it?”

“If Mr. Duncan finds Sancho and Chiquita, let’s send them to Manuel Perea and Sapoya on the Rio Grande.  When they go to the military school they can take our horses and theirs, and we’ll join the cavalry.”

“That’s so,” said Frank.  “Manuel wrote that if he went to school he should cross the plains with his uncle, Miguel Otero, who is a freighter.  He could take the whole outfit East for nothing.  There would remain only the cost of shipping them from Kansas City to the school.”

“Yes, but before you cook a hare you must catch him,” said I.

“And our two hares are on the other side of the Xuacaxella[1] Desert,” said Frank, despondently.  “I suppose there is small chance of our ever seeing them again.”

[Footnote 1:  Pronounced Hwar-car-hal-yar.]

Our two boy sergeants had found life in Arizona scarcely monotonous, for the hostile Apaches made it lively enough, compelling us to build a defensible post and look well to the protection of our stock.  A few years later a large force, occupying many posts, found it difficult to maintain themselves against those Indians, so it cannot seem strange to the reader that our small garrison of a hundred soldiers should find it difficult to do much more than act on the defensive.  Close confinement to the reservation chafed the boys.

A ride to Prescott, two miles distant, was the longest the boys had taken alone.  Two weeks before this chapter opens they had been invited to dine with Governor Goodwin, the Governor of the Territory, and he had made their call exceedingly pleasant.  When, at an advanced hour in the evening, the boys took leave of their host and went to the stable for their horses, they found them gone, with their saddles and bridles.

Inquiries made next day in town elicited the information that two notorious frontier scamps, Texas Dick and Juan Brincos, an American and Mexican, were missing, and it was the opinion of civil and military authorities that they had stolen the ponies.  The boys took Vic to the Governor’s, and, showing her the tracks of her equine friends, she followed them several miles on the Skull Valley trail.  It was plainly evident that the thieves had gone towards the Rio Colorado.