"Oh, Lieutenant!" shouted Henry from the direction of the Indians a moment later. "Come and see what these creatures are doing!"
I left the ambulance, and joined the group of soldiers who stood in a circle about an inner circle of seated Indians. Each Yavapais had selected a rat from the collection in his belt, and had laid it on the coals without dressing or in any way disturbing its anatomy. He rolled the rat over once or twice, and took it up and brushed and blew off the singed hair. He placed it again on the fire for a moment, and, taking it up, pinched off the fore legs close to the body, and the hind legs at the ham-joint. Replacing it on the coals, he turned it over and over a few more times. Picking it up for the third time, he held it daintily in the palm of his left hand, and with his right plucked off the flesh and placed it in his mouth.
When we were making our beds ready for the night, Vic, whom we had forgotten in the exciting events of the evening, trotted into camp and laid a horseshoe in Henry's lap. The lad took it up, and exclaimed,
"ONE OF CHIQUITA'S SHOES! A LEFT HIND SHOE!"
"One of Chiquita's shoes!—a left hind shoe!"
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Private Sattler always shaped the left heel of the left shoe like this, to correct a fault in her gait."
"May I look at the shoe, sergeant?" asked Corporal Duffey, approaching from the group of men near the guard's fire. "Shoes are like handwriting; no two blacksmiths make them alike."
Henry passed the shoe to the corporal, who turned it over, examined it closely, and handed it back, saying: