Very early in the morning the camp roused again. Apaches when on a raid or when pursued were supposed to travel on only one meal a day and with only three hours’ rest out of the twenty-four. So now on and on and on, through all kinds of rough country they hastened, at steady gait and speaking rarely――Jimmie riding a bareback horse. In late afternoon they halted on the rim of a valley so deep and wide that it was veiled in bluish-purple haze. On a rocky point three of the Apaches started a fire of dried grass, and sent up a smoke signal by heaping pitchy pine cones upon the blaze. Chewing twigs and sucking pebbles to keep their mouths wet, the Apaches, talking together and watching, waited, until a long distance across the valley, whose brushy sides were thickly grown with the mescal, or century plant cactuses, blooming in round stalks twenty feet tall, a smoke column answered. The Apaches tending to their own fire fed more pine cones to it, and two of them rapidly clapped a saddle-blanket on and off the smoke, and broke it into puffs. The smoke column across the valley puffed in reply. The Apache boy who had played bell-wether pressed to Jimmie’s horse. “Chi-cowah,” he said, pointing. That was Apache for “My home.” Now the party appeared satisfied. They scattered their fire, and struck down into a narrow trail that crossed the bottom of the valley. A peculiar sweetish smell hung in the misted air. This, Jimmie guessed, was from the steaming pits wherein the hearts of the mescal, or century plants, were being roasted. They glimpsed several squaws and children gathering foodstuff in the brush. As they filed through a little draw or rocky pass they were hailed loudly by an Apache sentinel posted above. He could not be seen, but the chief replied. The pass opened into a grassy flat concealed by the usual high crags and timbered ridges. Here was the Apache camp or rancheria (ran-cher-ee-ah), located along a willow-bordered creek. Fifty or sixty of the Apache brush huts or jacals were sprinkled all up and down the flat, and as soon as the party entered, a tremendous chorus of welcome sounded. Women shrieked, children screamed, dogs barked and mules brayed. Right into the center of the camp marched the party, and stopped. A circle of staring women and children, and a few men, surrounded. Other squaws bustled to take the horses and mules from the dismounting warriors. Jimmie was told to get off. Feeling lonesome and miserable, he saw close in front of him a boy who did not seem to be Indian at all, for he had fiery red hair and brick-red freckles and only one eye, which was blue! Yes――a red-headed, one-eyed, blue-eyed boy, rather runty, in only a whitish cotton girdle, and moccasins. Evidently he dressed that way――or undressed that way――all the time, for his body and limbs were burned darker than his face.