"It's the loneliest kind of a place, Captain Skinner," said Bill, just after he had helped turn the mules loose on the grass.
"I wish I knew just how lonely it is. I kind o' smell something."
"Do ye, Cap?"
Every such band of men has its "Captain," of some kind, and sometimes very good discipline and order is kept up. But Captain Skinner was hardly the man anybody would have picked out for a leader, before seeing how the rest listened to what he said, and how readily they seemed to obey him.
He was the shortest, thinnest, ugliest, and most ragged man in the whole party; and just at this moment he did not appear to be carrying any arms except the knife and pistol in his belt.
"If I don't smell it, I can see it. Look yonder, Bill."
"That's so!—blood!"
It was the spot on which the buck had fallen, and in a moment more than half a dozen men were looking around in all directions.
They understood all they saw, too, as well as any Indians in the world, for in less than five minutes Captain Skinner said: "That'll do, boys. We must follow that trail. Two white hunters. They killed the buck. Both wore moccasins; so they ain't fresh from the settlements. There's something queer about it. They were on foot, and they carried off their game."
It was indeed very queer, and it would not do to let any such puzzle as that go by unsolved. So, while several men were ordered out after game, and several more were left to guard the camp, Captain Skinner himself, with Bill and five others, armed to the teeth, set out at once on the trail of Murray and Steve Harrison.