“So I suppose. Sounds easy enough, but how in the world do you manage to make the crittur lie so still he won’t even make the grass move unnaturally?”
“Train um pinto. Injun pony no fool.”
“So it seems. But, just the same, I don’t see how you can rig up the grass, even after you’ve taught the pony to lie still,” declared Deadshot.
“Me show—after get Louie.”
Thus recalled to the business in hand, the two cowboys watched Nig as he turned to go back to the campfire, uttering a sharp command in some half-breed lingo which brought the pony to its feet as he did so.
“Say, if you and I knew as much as that old codger, we could get the finest job in Uncle Sam’s Mounted Scouts,” exclaimed Ki Yi, enthusiastically. “I’ll bet he has forgotten more than any other scout on the plains to-day ever knew.”
“No chance for an argument there,” returned the other cowboy. “I wouldn’t be in Scalping Louie’s shoes for all the money in the United States treasury.”
Put in an excellent humor by the praise of the cowpunchers, for he realized the praise of these men of the plains was the appreciation of men who knew, Slippery Nig quickly, and with an agility amazing in one of his years, vaulted onto the back of his pinto and headed toward the South.
CHAPTER XII.
THE PLAINSMEN ARE OUTWITTED.