Tad whistled. Reluctantly, stopping every few paces to look over his shoulder, Mike came back to the wagon. Joe handed Tad a piece of rope.
"Better tie him."
"Aw, Pa. Suppose—"
"Tie him."
Tad jumped into the snow and tied the rope around Mike's neck. Still bristling, tightening the rope, Mike strained down the Trail. Joe watched closely. Mike was an enthusiastic hunter as long as he hunted nothing larger than jack rabbits. He was not afraid of bigger game but he was smart enough to know that some things were too big for him, and therefore he paid little attention to them. Obviously he now scented either something that he wanted to hunt or something that offered prospects for a rousing battle, and presently the mules scented it too. They lifted their heads, cocked their ears forward, and watched ahead. Joe glanced at the rifle, and made sure of the exact location of his powder horn and bullet pouch.
Presently three Indians mounted on small brown horses came around the knoll that had hidden them and advanced toward the wagon. Two nondescript dogs trailed them. Joe took the reins in his left hand, leaving his right free should whatever happen next demand action. He looked keenly at the approaching riders.
They were wild, proud, startling. They wore full-length buckskin trousers, moccasins, and buffalo-skin coats. Fur hats were pulled over their black hair. They sat their little horses with an easy, insolent grace that few white men ever achieve. Their one concession to white men's ways was the long rifle that each carried over his saddle bow.
Looking to neither side, betraying by not so much as the flicker of an eyelid the fact that they saw the wagon and its occupants, they swerved around and continued down the trail. Even Mike's savage lunge at their dogs, a lunge that was halted only because Tad reefed full strength on the rope, did not disturb for one second the dogs, horses or riders. Without a single backward glance they disappeared around another knoll, and Joe halted the wagon to let Tad get in.
"Gee!" Tad gasped. "Was that a war party?"
"Must have been," Joe asserted.