In the event of battle men must be killed. If all the killed are among the enemy so much greater is the credit due the victorious chief. They have reduced the art of war to its most primitive conception; they have stripped it stark to its ultimate purpose, leaving the unlovely truth of it quite naked, unadorned by sophistries or hypocrisies--to kill without being killed.

At length Geronimo was convinced of the truth he had at first sensed--that the Mexicans were most vulnerable during their midday rest. Then their wagons were not parked into a circular fortress. The men were hot and tired and drowsy. They were lulled into a fancied security by the fact that they could see to great distances in all directions. Nothing as large as a man could approach them unseen. He had even noted that upon one occasion the entire party had dozed simultaneously at a noonday stop, and he made his plans accordingly.

From his intimate knowledge of the country, the trail, and the customs of freighters he knew where the noon stop upon the third day of the trailing would be made. That forenoon only one Apache trailed the unsuspecting Mexicans; the others were far ahead.

Noon approached. The complaining wheels of the great wagons jolted over the ruts of the road. The sweating mules pulled evenly and steadily. The drivers, with their single lines and their great bull-hide whips, urged their teams only sufficiently to keep the train well closed up.

Lackadaisically, soporifically, mechanically, they flicked the leaders with their long, pliant lashes. They did not curse their mules in strident voices as would American skinners. Sometimes they talked to them in low tones, or, again, they sang, and the mules plodded on through the dust, which rose in great clouds as they crossed a low, alkali flat, from which they emerged about noon upon higher, sandy ground, where the pulling was harder, but where there was no dust.

Presently the leading wagon stopped and the others drew up about it, but in no regular formation.. To their left the flat plain rose gently to meet the hills a mile away. To the right, in front of them and behind they could see to the distant mountains, empurpled by haze. A brilliant sun seared down upon the scorched land, a pitilessly revealing sun in the light of which nothing could hide. There was no breeze; nothing moved and there was no sound. Just silence was there except as it was broken by the breathing of the mules, the creaking or the jangling of a bit of harness.

The captain of the train scanned the landscape in all directions. Nothing moved, there was nothing irregular within his range of vision. Had there been he would have seen it, for he had spent the best part of his life tracking back and forth across Sonora.

"Keep a watch, Manuel," he directed one of his men, for even now he would not relax his vigilance.

Manuel shrugged, rolled a cigarette, and looked about. His companions had crawled beneath several of the wagons, where they lay in the shade smoking, or already dozing. As far as he could see the land lay rollingly level, dotted with small bushes, not one of which would have offered concealment to anything larger than a jack rabbit. The sun was very hot and the shade beneath the wagons looked inviting to Manuel. He walked along the edge of the teams to the rearmost one and then back again. Glancing beneath a certain wagon he saw the captain curled up in sleep.

The guard walked all around the twenty wagons, looking off as far as he could. There were only Indians to fear and there were none in sight. Jesus Garcia had said that there was not an Apache within three hundred miles and Jesus was a famous Indian fighter. He had fought the Apaches and the Yaquis both. Manuel yawned and crawled beneath a wagon, just to finish his cigarette in the shade.

The mules had settled down to rest, sensible as mules always are.