462 MEETING WITH APACHES. Book III. 
manner — doing nothing, at the most critical moment, but 
rub flour over their faces, probably that the Indians might 
take them for whites — still we numbered thirty good 
shots, planted behind our waggons, all armed with guns ; 
and the savages would have come off badly had they ven- 
tured to attack us. They might, perhaps, have calculated 
all this beforehand, and determined to try, at least, to 
frighten us, and thus to induce us to make them liberal 
presents. 
This band of Indians had two chiefs — the brothers 
Marcos and Soldadito — notorious names. They belonged 
to the Mescaleros, and had formerly lived on the shores of 
the Rio Grande, near the Presidio del Norte, where, for a 
long time, they were the terror of the country around, 
until they were driven into the wilderness of Texas by the 
Nortenos, and their allies the Comanches. I afterwards 
heard that the remnant of the band of the notorious Espejo 
had joined them, against whom, nine months before, the 
war-party of Nortenos and Comanches, whom we had met 
near the Presidio, were marching. 
As soon as I had a little recovered from my fatigue, I 
went up to the group, where the two chiefs were in treaty 
with my companions. There I saw the lance which had 
been stuck into the ground : the long blond hair of a white 
woman they had murdered was fluttering from it in the 
wind; the end was formed of an old sword-blade, bear- 
ing the inscription, " Por el Rey Carlos III." A Mexican 
prisoner acted as interpreter at this conference, and through 
his mediation Marcos harangued Don Guillermo, who had 
undertaken to act the part of " Captain." " You are a 
rich man," said the Apache : "your waggons roll over the 
country like thunder. We have seen you from our moun- 
tains crossing the plains. You sit by your fires and smoke 
