My eyes had been open for some time before my thoughts fell into place and realization came to me.  Over my head was some sort of a brush shelter and I was lying on a couple of deerskins.

Turning my head, I looked down the gentle slope and saw the Apaches.  There were six or seven men and twice that many women gathered around a small fire, eating and talking.

It all came back to me then, the Apaches moving up on either side of me, the falling down, the getting up.  How long, I wondered, had they followed me?

One of the squaws said something, and a squat, powerfully built Indian got to his feet.  He came up the slope, wearing only a headband, breechclout, and the knee-high moccasins favored by the Apache.

He squatted beside me, gesturing toward my leg, the wound on my skull, and my other injuries.  And he made the sign for brave man, holding the left fist in front of the body and striking down past it with the right.

"Friend," I said, "amigo."

He touched the bullet scar on my skull.  "Apache?"

"White-eye," I replied, using the term they gave to white man.  And I added, "I will find him."

He nodded, and then said, "You hungry?"

"Yes," I said, and after a moment asked, "How long have I been here?"

He held up three fingers, and added, "We go now."

"To Camp Verde?"

For a minute there I thought he was going to smile.  There was a kind of grim humor in his eyes as he shook his head.  "No Camp Verde."  He waved his hand toward the Mogollons.  He studied me carefully.  "Soldier at Camp Verde."

He paused while I lay there wondering what was going to happen to me.  Would they take me along as a prisoner?  Or let me go?  "I need guns," I said, "and a horse.  I can get them at Verde."

"You very bad," he said.  "You all right now?"

Now that there was a question.  To tell the truth, I felt as weak as a cat, but I wasn't telling him that, so I told him I was all right.  He stood up suddenly and dropped a buckskin sack beside me and then walked away.  What would come now I didn't know, and I was too weak to care.  So I closed my eyes for a moment and must have passed right out, because when I opened them again it was cold and dark, and there was no smell of fire, no sound or movement.

Crawling from the deerskin bed where I had been lying, I looked all around.  I was alone.