They made a raid down South, I hear, last month, and burnt half a dozen Mexican villages, and they would make short work with you if they came across you anywhere near their country.

However, I suppose you aint going to be fool enough to go that way, especially as I see you have got two green hands with you." "They are old enough to be useful," Dave said.

"We can put them to cook and look after the horses, if they can't do anything else.

They are Britishers, and one of them stood by me pluckily in a mess I got into in San Diego; so as they had left their ship and were out of a berth, I thought I would bring them with me, as they had a fancy for seeing a little of mining life, before they shipped back again." Two days after their arrival at Santa Fe they started.
"We will strike due south as if intending to enter Mexico; one never knows who is watching one," Dave said the evening before.

"There are always some pretty hard men about these border towns--miners who are down on their luck; men who have had to run from the northern diggings, and such like.