"I am simply going to use the tricks of the one, which you understand, to explain the tricks of the other, which you do not understand," replied George. "They are a good deal alike in some respects. A fox, when he finds himself hard pressed, will resort to all sorts of manoeuvres to throw the hounds off the trail. One of his tricks is to run over a newly-ploughed field, if he can find one, where the scent will not lie. What would that brag hound of yours do in such a case? Would he waste valuable time in running about over that field trying to pick up a scent that wasn't there?"
"No, he wouldn't. He would run around the outside of the field until he found the place where the fox left it."
"Exactly. Now, an Indian is just as full of tricks as a fox is. When he is afraid of pursuit he will break his party up into small bands, and, although the trails made by these bands will lead in different directions at the start, you will find, if you break up your own party and follow them for a while, that they all tend toward the same points, where these little bands will all be reunited. Of course each of the trails will be obliterated as much as possible. Some of them will lead over rocky ground, where the hoof of a pony will leave no imprint; others will come to an abrupt termination on the bank of some stream; and others still will end at a place where the prairie has been burned over. When these war-parties break up in the way I have described, a place of meeting is always agreed on beforehand; and if a scout understands his business he can tell pretty nearly where that place is, for it is sure to be on the straightest and most direct route to the agency if the raiders belong to a 'friendly' tribe, or to their principal village if they belong to a tribe that is openly hostile. If these Kiowas take to the Staked Plains, they will probably enter it directly north of here, at its widest part. Then this Mountain Mose, if he is the scout he pretends to be, will leave their trail to take care of itself and draw a bee-line for the nearest water; and it will take thirty hours' rapid marching to reach it, too."
"How do you know? Have you ever been there?"
"No, but my herdsman Zeke has; and he has described the course to be followed so minutely that I can go there any day the sun shines or any night when the stars shine."
Bob did not say anything, but his friend noticed that he looked a little incredulous.
"It is not so difficult as it appears to be at first glance," George hastened to say. "Why, when a party of young Indians want to go into a strange country for plunder and scalps, they gather around some old warrior, who traces on the ground the direction in which they must travel in order to reach that country, describes all the water-courses and locates the principal landmarks to be found along the route; and with nothing but these verbal instructions to guide them, these little rascals, some of them not more than thirteen or fourteen years of age, will make a journey of hundreds of miles through a region that none of them have ever visited before. My bump of locality is not so large as an Indian's, but still I have a pretty good memory, and I have travelled many a mile through a strange country without going a step out of my way."
"What sort of a looking place is Staked Plains, anyhow?" asked Bob. "I have heard so many terrible stories told about it that I am almost afraid of it. What gave it that name? Are there any stakes there?"
Bob was inclined to be facetious when he said this, and consequently he was not a little astonished to hear George say in reply,
"There may not be any stakes there now, but there used to be. It is a terrible place, and many a wagon-train has left its bones there. It is big enough to get lost in, for it lacks only about six thousand square-miles of being as large as the State of New York; and although it is not exactly a desert, as we understand the word, it is a barren waste, where nothing living permanently resides on account of the great scarcity of water. A long time ago the Mexican traders marked out a route with stakes across the plain where they found a few small fountains, and that was what gave it the name it bears. Zeke says it is a perfect bake-oven. There are no trees to shelter you, no grass for your horses, no fuel to build a fire with, and an almost unearthly silence broods over it. I am not superstitious, but Zeke always speaks of it with a shudder, and I tell you I don't want to see any place that he is afraid of."