He would have thought a regiment hardly sufficient to guard such a treasure.
"How timorous these men are," sniffed Aunt Maria, who, having seen no hostile Indians, did not believe there were any.

"And it seems to me that soldiers are more easily scared than anybody else," she added, casting a depreciating glance at Thurstane, who was reconnoitring the landscape through his field glass.
Clara believed in men, and especially in soldiers, and more particularly in lieutenants.

Accordingly she replied, "I suppose they know the dangers and we don't." "Pshaw!" said Aunt Maria, an argument which carried great weight with her.
"They don't know half what they claim to.

It is a clever man who knows one-tenth of his own business." (She was right there.) "They don't know so much, I verily and solemnly believe, as the women whom they pretend to despise." This peaceful and cheering conversation was interrupted by a shot ringing out of a canon which opened into a range of rock some three hundred yards ahead of the caravan.

Immediately on the shot came a yell as of a hundred demons, a furious trampling of the feet of many horses, and a cloud of the Tartars of the American desert.
In advance of the rush flew the two Mexican vedettes, screaming, "Apaches! Apaches!".