Suddenly the racing Indians swerved east, toward some rocky hills. They rode up a narrow cleft, the only one around which horses could climb. The soldiers shot, but the range was so long that they hit no one. Reaching the summit of the cleft, the Apaches took their horses behind some rocks where they would be safe from bullets. Then they scrambled back to take up positions in the rocks themselves. The soldiers launched a spirited attack, but they could not advance under the withering fire rained down upon them. They retreated, re-formed, and attacked again. The Apaches shot slowly and carefully, for they wanted neither a fierce battle nor close-quarter fighting. Their only purpose was to delay the soldiers until the women and children had had time to reach a place of safety. Two hours after the soldiers first opened fire, the Apaches began to slip away. Each mounted his own horse, and each took a different path to rejoin the women and children. Finally only Geronimo and a dozen others were left. They fired at the soldiers and drove them to cover in the rocks. Then all the remaining Apaches rose and ran to their horses. On their next attack, the soldiers took the hilltop. There was not an Apache left to resist them, but there were sixty different trails that led in sixty different directions. Forty-eight hours after they left San Carlos, the Apaches crossed the Mexican border and were safe in the Sierra Madre Mountains. CHAPTER THIRTEEN _Fortress Paradise_ Urged by three of Geronimo's warriors, fifty-three cattle climbed laboriously up a slope and shuffled into pine forest. Stolen from a Mexican _rancheria_, they had been driven most of the night at the fastest pace they could keep up. Now the cattle staggered with weariness. But they would rest soon. Geronimo and a warrior named Francisco, who had helped steal the cattle, were with the raiding party. Watching only until the cattle had reached the mountain top, they turned to look back down the slope. Beneath, the Sierra Madres leveled into low foothills. In the distance, the hills seemed to fold into each other, so that instead of many mountains there was just one. Finally the one was lost in a shimmering blue haze. The two Apaches tied their horses to nearby trees and continued to scan the hills below them. It was Geronimo who spoke. "They come." Far beneath, made small by distance, a line of Mexican soldiers moved slowly but steadily on the cattle's trail. The two Apaches looked at them as one might regard some interesting insects. [Illustration] Geronimo had never been a chief while Apaches still lived by their ancient customs. But he was one now because he had been chosen by the people who had escaped from San Carlos, to be their leader. Neither he nor Francisco, the warrior, were the least bit excited by the sight of the Mexican soldiers. Their rifles leaned against two trees.