Geronimo grunted sourly and lay down to sleep. A half hour later he was awakened by Francisco's hand on his shoulder. "They come," said Francisco. Geronimo sat up and looked down the slope to see some thirty soldiers climbing it. All led their horses, and they stopped often to rest. Geronimo turned to Francisco. "These are not the _rurales_ we once fought," he said. "_Rurales_ never came so deeply into the Sierra Madres. If they did, they were never so foolish as to be caught in daylight on a slope such as this." Francisco asked disinterestedly, "Who are they?" Geronimo said, "It has come to my ears that they have been sent from a far-off place known as Mexico City. The Nan-Tan, the chief, of Mexico City has at last discovered and is greedy for the gold and silver to be found here. He has sent his soldiers to protect it. Ha!" "Ha indeed," Francisco grunted. "Are you ready?" "Ready," said Geronimo. Each lifted a football-sized boulder from its bed, tilted it on end, and let it go. The rolling boulders gathered stones, gravel, more boulders. A fair-sized landslide, indeed an avalanche, thundered down. A great cloud of dust arose. When the dust cleared, Geronimo and Francisco again saw the soldiers. They had escaped the avalanche by running frantically to one side or the other, taking their horses with them. But all were mounted now and galloping frantically back in the direction from which they had come. [Illustration] Geronimo said, "The soldier chief at San Carlos asked me how we fought Mexicans. I told him bullets are too hard to get to waste on them, and that we fought them with rocks. He thought I lied." Without another word he started up the slope, following the trail of the other three raiders and the cattle. A week later Chato, Benito, and twenty-five of the twenty-six warriors who had gone raiding in Arizona, rode into Geronimo's camp. Chato dismounted, loosed his horse, and went to sleep beneath a pine. Benito regarded him admiringly. "That one sleeps only in the saddle while he is on a raid!" he said. "When the rest of us slept, he stood guard!" "Was it a good raid?" Geronimo inquired. "A very good raid," Benito said. "For the six days we spent in Arizona, we were seldom out of the saddle. We struck where we would, and stole fresh horses where we needed them. In six days we rode four hundred and fifty miles." Geronimo said, "I do not see Tzoe among those who returned." "You will not see Tzoe," said Benito. "Though Chato warned him that it was a foolish thing to do, he left us and went to visit his friends who remain at San Carlos. He is now a prisoner of the white soldiers."