I've knowed some good men among them, but I wouldn't take the word of any of that crowd of generals, Santa Anna, Cos, Sesma, Urrea, Gaona, Castrillon, the Italian Filisola, or any of them." "There's one I'd trust," said Ned, with grateful memory, "and that's Almonte." "I've heard that he's of different stuff," said the Panther, "but it's best to keep out of their hands." They were now riding swiftly almost due southward, having changed their course to follow the trail, and they kept a sharp watch ahead for Mexican scouts or skirmishers.

But the bare country in its winter brown was lone and desolate.

The trail led straight ahead, and it would have been obvious now to the most inexperienced eye that an army had passed that way.

They saw remains of camp fires, now and then the skeleton of a horse or mule picked clean by buzzards, fragments of worn-out clothing that had been thrown aside, and once a broken-down wagon.

Two or three times they saw little mounds of earth with rude wooden crosses stuck upon them, to mark where some of the wounded had died and had been buried.
They came at last to a bit of woodland growing about a spring that seemed to gush straight up from the earth.