XXIV. SILE'S VICTORY 191 XXV. A MIDNIGHT MARCH 199 XXVI. PREPARING FOR AN ATTACK 207 XXVII. FROM BOW TO RIFLE 216 XXVIII. THE APACHES HAVE COME 224 XXIX. STIRRING TIMES 232 XXX. A DARING RIDE 239 ILLUSTRATIONS "Two arrows explores the ruins" _Frontispiece_ "Not a boy or girl among them had such a treasure as that mirror" _Facing p._ 120 "The midnight march of the Nez Perces" " 206 "His right hand with his palm up to show that he was peaceful" " 230 TWO ARROWS TWO ARROWS A STORY OF RED AND WHITE CHAPTER I THE HUNGRY CAMP The mountain countries of all the earth have always been wonder-lands. The oldest and best known of them are to this day full of things that nobody has found out. That is the reason why people are always exploring them, but they keep their secrets remarkably well, particularly the great secret of how they happened to get there in that shape. The great western mountain country of the United States is made up of range after range of wonderful peaks and ridges, and men have peered in among them here and there, but for all the peering and searching nothing of the wonder to speak of has been rubbed away. Right in the eastern, edge of one of these mountain ridges, one warm September morning, not long ago, a band of Nez Perce Indians were encamped. It was in what is commonly called "the Far West," because always when you get there the West is as far away as ever. The camp was in a sort of nook, and it was not easy to say whether a spur of the mountain jutted out into the plain, or whether a spur of the plain made a dent in the ragged line of the mountains. More than a dozen "lodges," made of skins upheld by poles, were scattered around on the smoother spots, not far from a bubbling spring of water. There were some trees and bushes and patches of grass near the spring, but the little brook which trickled away from it did not travel a great way into the world, from the place where it was born, before it was soaked up and disappeared among the sand and gravel. Up and beyond the spring, the farther one chose to look, the rockier and the ruggeder everything seemed to be. Take it all together, it was a forlorn looking, hot, dried-up, and uncomfortable sort of place. The very lodges themselves, and the human beings around them, made it appear pitifully desolate. The spring was the only visible thing that seemed to be alive and cheerful and at work.