“Some of Cayuse’s picture-writing!” exclaimed Dell, drawing near and leaning on the table beside the scout. “It must be a clue to the course taken by Lawless and his gang—that is, if it isn’t a trick Lawless is trying to play on you.”
“I don’t think it’s a trick,” the scout answered. “Unless I’m wide of my trail, Lawless doesn’t know Cayuse is following him, so he wouldn’t have any reason to send in a treacherous red with a piece of birch-bark and say the same came from the boy. Besides, Tenny rode into camp with the Indian, and says he is straight goods.”
“Good!” murmured Dell exultantly. “That means, pard, we’ve got a clue, first clatter out of the box.”
She studied the picture for a space.
“That looks like Cayuse’s work,” she said finally, “and that little horse, down in the right-hand corner, is the way he always signs his name. But I can’t make anything out of it. Can you?”
It took a keen mind to decipher the Piute boy’s communications. Having a keen mind himself, he credited everybody else with the same shrewdness, and drew his symbols with a free hand.
The strip of bark was comparatively fresh, and the picture was drawn with a knife-point on the soft surface that had lain next the tree. Wherever the steel point had traveled it had left a plainly perceptible line.
“Off to the right here,” mused the scout, “is an odd-looking hill.”
“It looks about as much like an adobe house as it does like a hill,” countered Dell.
“Trees don’t grow on adobe houses, Dell. That thing on top of the hill is a tree.”