He rejoiced in his liberty from iron bars and a bare mud floor, and showed his gratitude in the most untiring vigilance and in the endurance of what seemed to the Eastern mind the greatest discomforts. He always rode in advance of the column, and with his eyes wandering from the trail to the horizon and towards the backs of distant moving cattle, and again to the trail at his feet. Whenever he saw any one--and he could discover a suspected revolutionist long before any one else--the first intimation the rest of the scouting party would get of it was his pulling out his Winchester and disappearing on a gallop into the chaparral. He scorned the assistance of the troop, and when we came up to him again, after a wild dash through the brush, which left our hats and portions of our clothing to mark our way, we would find him with his prisoner’s carbine tucked under his arm, and beaming upon him with a smile of wicked satisfaction. As a trailer he showed, as do many of these guides, what seemed to be a gift of second-sight cultivated to a supernatural degree. He would say: “Five horses have passed ahead of us about an hour since. Two are led and one has two men on his back, and there is one on each of the other two;” which, when we caught up to them at the first watering-place, would prove to be true. Or he would tell us that troops or Rangers to such a number had crossed the trail at some time three or four days before, that a certain mark was made by a horse wandering without a rider, or that another had been made by a pony so many years old--all of which statements would be verified later. But it was as a would-be belligerent that he shone most picturesquely. When he saw a thin column of smoke rising from a cañon where revolutionists were supposed to be in camp, or came upon several armed men riding towards us and too close to escape, his face would light up with a smile of the most wicked content and delight, and he would beam like a cannibal before a feast as he pumped out the empty cartridges and murmured, “Buena! buena! buena!” with rolling eyes and an anticipatory smack of the lips. But he was generally disappointed; the smoke would come from a shepherd’s fire, and the revolutionists would point to the antelope-skins under their saddles, which had been several months in drying, and swear they were hunters, and call upon the saints to prove that they had never heard of such a man as Garza, and that carbines, revolvers, and knives were what every antelope-hunter needed for self-protection. At which the Mexican would show his teeth and roll his eyes with such a cruel show of disbelief that they would beg the “good captain” to protect them and let them go, which, owing to the fact that one cannot get a warrant and a notary public in the brush, as the regulations require, he would, after searching them, be compelled to do. [Illustration: THIRD CAVALRY TROOPERS--SEARCHING A SUSPECTED REVOLUTIONIST]