The art of trailing was developed among the Apaches and Comanches more than among other Indians on this continent. Possibly a few Delawares might be excepted. The success of Geronimo’s operations, as well as those of his able lieutenants, Cochise, Naiche, Mangus-Colorado, was chiefly due to the fact that the trail was to them an open book. As an illustration of the skill of the desert Indians in this respect, I would cite the case of Pedro Espinosa, who, when nine years old was captured by the Comanche and for years lived with the Comanches and Apaches. Colonel Dodge says of him that he was a marvel even to the Indians themselves, and relates this incident: “I was once sent in pursuit of a party of murdering Comanches, who had been pursued, scattered, and the trail abandoned by a company of so-called Texas rangers. On the eighth day after the scattering, Espinosa took the trail of a single shod horse. When we were fairly into the rough, rocky Guadalope Mountains, he stopped, dismounted, and picked up from the foot of a tree the four shoes of the horse ridden by the Indian. With a grim smile he handed them to me, and informed me that the Indian intended to hide his trail. For six days we journeyed over the roughest mountains, turning and twisting in apparently the most objectless way, not a man in the whole command being able to discover, sometimes for hours, a single mark by which Espinosa might direct himself. Sometimes I lost patience, and demanded that he show us what he was following. ‘Poco tiempo,’ he would blandly answer, and in a longer or shorter time, show me the clear-cut footprints of the horse in the soft bank of some mountain stream, or point with his long wiping-stick to most unmistakable ‘sign’ in the droppings of the horse. Following the devious windings of this trail for nearly a hundred and fifty miles, scarcely ever at a loss, and only once or twice dismounting, more closely to examine the ground, he finally brought me to where the Indians had reunited.”