"Don't you know somebody who rides just like that?" Bud inquired.
"Some one we all know?"
Nort and Dick uttered exclamations. Bud's words were all that was needed to set in motion a slumbering train of thought.
"Looks to me like he was hurt," affirmed Yellin' Kid. "Can't be one of the Yaquis. They wouldn't be this near. And if they was they'd be too big cowards to ride right for us this way."
"This isn't any unfriendly Indian!" declared Bud. "He knows us—and we know him!"
"How come?" demanded Snake, half incredulously.
"Can't you see?" cried Bud. "It's our own Indian—Buck Tooth!"
"Wow!" shouted Yellin' Kid. "So it is! But I'd never have known him.
He's all togged out—got his war paint on!"
And, in very truth, Buck Tooth—for he it was—had donned a strange garb. Wearing some of the clothing of civilization, he had ornamented himself with dangling bits of cow-hide, with parts of tails dangling from it. He carried behind him a collection of pans and camp paraphanalia that rattled and banged about him as he rode forward. He had stuck some feathers in his coarse black hair and he was a somewhat laughable mixture of an American and Mexican Indian on the warpath.
"Ugh!" grunted Buck Tooth when he came within speaking distance. Not that he ever spoke much, but this was his greeting.
"What'd you come away from the ranch for?" demanded Bud, for Buck Tooth was a valued hand on a cattle place, and he had been left with the somewhat small force to take charge of Happy Valley when the others had started after the Yaquis. "What you doing here?" Bud wanted to know.