"Good morning to you, ladies!" he saluted, taking off his sombrero with a flourish. "Lovely weather, ain't it?" And with his tongue in his cheek and a roguish glance at Aragon, who was stricken dumb by this last effrontery, he went rollicking after his pardner, sending back a series of joyous yips. "Now that sure does me good," he confided to Phil, as they rode down between cottonwoods and struck into the muddy creek. "No sense in it, but it gets something out of my system that has kept me from feeling glad. Did you see me bowing to the ladies? Some class to that bow--no? You want to look out--I got my eye on that gal, and I'm sure a hard one to head. Only thing is, I wouldn't like the old man for a father-in-law the way matters stand between us now." He laughed boisterously at this witticism, and the little Mexican children, playing among the willows, crouched and lay quiet like rabbits. Along the sides of the rocky hills, where the peons had their mud-and-rock houses, mothers came anxiously to open doors; and as they jogged along up the river the Chinese gardeners, working in each separate nook and eddy of the storm-washed creek-bed, stopped grubbing to gaze at them inquiringly. "Wonder what's the matter with them chinks?" observed Bud, when his happiness had ceased to effervesce. "They sit up like a village of prairie-dogs! Whole country seems to be on the rubber-neck. Must be something doing." "That's right," agreed Phil. "Did you notice how those peons scattered when I rode down the street? Maybe there's been some _insurrectos_ through. But say--listen!" He stopped his horse, and in the silence a bugle-call came down the wind from the direction of Fortuna. "Soldiers!" he said. "Now where did they come from? I was in Fortuna day before yesterday, and--well, look at that!" From the point of the hill just ahead of them a line of soldiers came into view, marching two abreast, with a mounted officer in the lead. "Aha!" exclaimed Bud with conviction; "they've started something down below. This is that bunch of Federals that we saw drilling up at Agua Negra." "Yep," admitted De Lancey regretfully; "I guess you're right for once--the open season for rebels has begun." They drew out of the road and let them pass--a long, double line of shabby infantrymen, still wearing their last-year's straw hats and summer uniforms and trudging along in flapping sandals. In front were two men bearing lanterns, to search out the way by night; slatternly women, the inevitable camp-followers, trotted along at the sides with their bundles and babies; and as the little brown men from Zacatecas, each burdened with his heavy gun and a job lot of belts and packs, shuffled patiently past the Americans, they flashed the whites of their eyes and rumbled a chorus of "Adios!" "_Adios, Americanos!_" they called, gazing enviously at their fine horses, and Phil in his turn touched his hat and wished them all God-speed.