"Yes, not a man around the Red Spar has a good word to say about that Tod Harkness," ventured Donald, still grinning; "he's been a cattle rustler and a general all-round shirk, a thief and everything that's bad. They thought you'd been sold the worst kind. Why, some of the men wanted to know if the sneak hadn't stolen your pocketbook while you were helping him walk to a place where you meant to camp, that night you got lost."

"Well, he didn't, and that's all there is about it," said Billie, firmly. "Mebbe Tod Harkness is everything you say; but he was a mighty sick man right then and there. So please forget it. I know I'm soft, and most anybody can impose on me; but I was born that way; and they say the leopard just can't change his spots. Let that little episode drop. I ain't sorry one whit, I tell you. Do it again if I ran across a sick man, don't care if he was the Old Nick himself. So there!"

Donald gave Adrian a nod as if to say "just see how set he is in his ways;" but neither of them continued making any further remark upon the subject which was such a sore one with their stout chum.

Indeed, further conversation was rendered out of the question by Bray, for the pack mule took a sudden notion to give tongue; and when he let out his voice no human tones could prevail against the raucous sounds.

"I think I can see where we're going to put up tonight!" Donald called out, some ten minutes afterwards.

At that Billie brightened visibly.

"Oh! that's the best thing I've heard you say for a whole hour, Donald,"

he declared, with some signs of excitement. "Then, chances are we'll be getting busy with supper before a great while. That always pleases me, you know, boys."

"Yes, and it's a lucky thing for all of us that the wives of those miners saw fit to make up that hunky-dory pack of supplies, when they heard where we meant to head for, before starting back to Keystone ranch," Adrian went on to say.

"Oh! I'm always free to admit that I've got some appet.i.te along with me," acknowledged Billie, complacently; for nothing they could ever say along these lines seemed to disturb him in the least.

Before twenty minutes had come and gone they were proceeding to get the tent in position; at least Billie and Adrian set about accomplishing this task, after the horses had been staked out where they could nibble at the gra.s.s growing near the spring hole; while Donald arranged a fireplace out of convenient stones, hunter-fashion, it being wider in front for the frying-pan to set there, while the coffee-pot could straddle the narrow section in the rear.

Billie was as happy as a lark; he always acted that way when a bustle in the way of getting ready to eat came along.

"It's hard for me to believe that, after dreaming about it for years, I'm going to actually set eyes on them queer Zunis in a couple of days,"

he started to say; and then turning quickly on Donald, as though he had remembered something he may have intended asking, he went on: "didn't you say that this was about the time of year when they had all their dances, and carried on such high jinks?"

"I wouldn't be surprised, from what Corse Tibbals told me, if we just happened to hit it about right for all the ceremonies they go through with every year," Donald replied. "And I reckon, now, that you mean to try and get some snapshots while that native circus is going on, don't you, Billie?"

"Just what I'm thinking of trying," admitted the other, naively. "Course I've got a heap of pictures of the Zunis and Hopis at home, but that ain't the same as snapping 'em off all by yourself. I'd rather have a poor picture that I'd taken myself, than the finest any artist could produce. Ain't that right, Adrian?"

He always appealed to the other when making any statement of this sort; and as usual Adrian quickly backed him up.

"Of course you would, and rightly too, Billie; because that shows you were on deck when the dancing was going on. For a fellow couldn't very well take a picture of a thing unless he was there, could he?"

"Sure he couldn't, 'less he piked a copy from another picture," Billie declared. "And I only hope I'll get chances to use up a whole string of films, with the girls and their queer head-dresses showing like the Hopi Indians do, and p'raps the old medicine-man all dressed up in his togs adoing a two-step, while he shakes his gourds and rattles, and tinkles his little bells in great style. Oh! I'm cram full of the subject, let me tell you, boys; and I'll never be happy till I see it all with my very eyes."

"Well, what are we going to have for supper?" asked Donald, who knew very well that only in this way could the talkative Billie be made to branch off the subject that had begun to be wearisome to the rest of the little party.

The ruse succeeded, too, as it always did; and Billie was quickly at work undoing several of those mysterious packages which the grateful wives of the miners had made up for the trio of saddle pards.

His various exclamations of delight must have early convinced both Adrian and Donald that the fat boy had made numerous satisfactory discoveries. And later on, when that supper was cooked, and they sat around in easy att.i.tudes, consuming the same, they voted that the women of the Red Spar camp were all "trumps" of the first water; because they knew what hungry boys liked most.

"Had we better keep any sort of watch tonight?" asked Billie, yawning, a couple of hours after they had finished eating; the interval that had elapsed having been occupied with much talk along various interesting lines, during which Billie managed as usual to soak up a great deal of information.

"Well, of course the horses are about as good as a sentry," admitted Donald, who had trained his pony, Wireless, to snort, and wake him up in case enemies came prowling around; "but all the same we'd better sleep with one eye open. It's a mighty poor policy to wait till the horse is stolen before you lock the stable door, so my dad always says. And there might be some rustler in this section like, well, Billie's good friend, Tod, you know; who just couldn't keep from grabbing our mounts, no matter how hard he tried."

"Yes," added Adrian, as though to put a clincher in the a.s.sertion made by his chum, "and it'd be no joke for us to be left on foot away off here, hundreds of miles from home. We'll keep our arms handy, and if any sneak gives us a call, why we can make him sorry he found us at home, that's what."

"Hark! listen to Wireless right now, would you?" exclaimed Donald, in a low, tense voice, as he half arose to his feet, quivering with sudden excitement.

Billie was the only one to s.n.a.t.c.h up a gun, which he happened to have alongside at that particular moment.

"Look there, will you?" called out Donald; "see him scuttle off into the darkness, of the shadows? An Injun as sure as you live. Oh! if only I had my gun in my hands. Give him a shot, Billie, why don't you?"

But Billie, although he half raised his Marlin rifle, failed to shoot.

Possibly the thought of hurting a human being did not appeal to him in the same sense as it did these boys of the plains. Then again, perhaps the haste with which the shadowy figure of the dusky warrior scuttled out of sight rather disconcerted the fat boy. At any rate, Billie only stood there with his gun half raised; and the next thing he knew there was nothing but the moonlight and the shadows before him.

CHAPTER IV.

THE STRANGE SHOT.

"Oh! he's gone!" exclaimed Billie.

"Of course he is!" echoed Donald, in disgust; "say, how long did you expect a slick Injun to stay around, waiting for you to make up your mind to shoot?"

"But good gracious, Donald, what should I fire away at him for? He hadn't done a single thing but creep up here to see who was making all this blaze and smoke. That's a mighty little thing to try to kill anybody for. Why, I'd like as not be just as curious myself."

Donald snorted as he turned to Adrian.

"Listen to the innocent, would you, Ad?" he remarked, in half discouraged tone. "Why, what else would a red be prowling around our camp for, except looking for a good chance to steal our horses."

"Is that so, Donald?" Billie went on to say; "then I suppose I ought to have banged away, anyhow, and given him a scare; but you see I was that confused I hardly knew what I was about."

"A scare!" echoed Donald. "Why, don't you know, you innocent, that a cow-puncher would forgive a thief for robbing him of his money, and almost causing his death, quicker than he would for trying to steal his mount?"

"Yes," Adrian went on to add, "they are a good deal like the Arab in that respect. You see, a horse means everything on the prairie, or in the desert; and to take a man's mount is just the same as threatening his life. Did you manage to get any half-way decent look at him, Donald?"

"Well, not so you could mention it," replied the other, who now had his gun in his hand, and was staring out into the mixture of moonlight and dim shadows as if he still clung to a faint hope that he might find a chance to use the weapon. "But there can be no question about what he was."

"Some stray from the reservation, you think?" Adrian continued; while Billie stood near by, listening eagerly.

"Every once in so often some of the hot-blooded young bucks get a notion that things are too tame on the reservation," Donald started to say with the air of one who knew full well what he was talking about.

"And so they start out to take a turn around," Adrian added, "thinking they ought to copy after their ancestors, and feel wild for a spell.

Sometimes they play havoc among the white, being filled with firewater; and then there is trouble enough, with some of the same young bucks getting shot. And as Donald says, an Indian can never resist a chance to steal a horse, when he's off on a tear like that, free from all the restraint of the old men of his tribe."

"Perhaps he may think to come back, and make another try?" suggested Billie.

"Chances are he will do just that same thing; and as he must have one or more friends along, we may have to do some business with our guns before morning," Donald told him, positively.

Billie was duly impressed with the serious nature of the case. Still, he hardly liked the idea of being compelled to shed human blood just because of a horse like his Jupiter. Secretly he hoped that if there did come along any necessity for this sort of thing, his companions would accept some of the burden of responsibility, since they did not seem to care as much as he did.

Donald altered his plans more or less, after this plain warning. Now that they actually knew there were thieving Indians around, they could not afford to take any chances of losing their horses.

Accordingly the animals, as well as Bray the pack mule, were brought in closer to the tent. They had been given ample time to procure a supper, and should rest contented during the remainder of the night.