“Me no squaw,” he said.
“Not by a jugful,” assented the scout, “but we want you to be at your best to-night. I think there is an Indian encampment near, and after dark I want you to wiggle into it and find out all there is to know.”
The Indian boy was pleased at the scout’s evidence of confidence in him, and submitted with a grunt of satisfaction.
The scout had hoped by a careful study of the plain to discover some evidence of the location of the encampment which he believed must be near, and he was not disappointed.
Scarcely an hour had passed before he saw a large party of horsemen far to the south moving westward. They came into view now and then as they passed over the higher points of the rolling plain. He saw them quite distinctly as they forded the river, and then for a time they disappeared, to come into view again after half an hour, showing that they had crossed quite a respectable valley.
Again they went over a ridge, and were seen no more. The scout decided that the party had either stopped in this valley or that it was so broad that the horsemen were beyond reach of the human eye when they reached the far side.
“To-night,” he said aloud, as he arose to collect the lariats of the ponies, “we’ll move down into that country and see what we may discover.”
It was dark when the scout awoke, and for a time he could not think where he was. Then he remembered finding Nomad and Cayuse sleeping in the gully, and that he had tied the ponies together, and sat down in the shadow of the precipitous wall to wait a while before awakening either of his pards.
He now recalled guiltily that he had slept at his post. He moved over to where Nomad and the Piute had lain. Both were gone. He groped his way to where he had left the ponies, and they, too, were gone.
“It’s one on me,” chuckled the scout. “The pards are giving the ponies a chance to graze, and are letting me have my nap out.”