returned
to watch the track.

While seated there on a fallen tree, thinking with much satisfaction of
some of her recent adventures, she suddenly conceived a little plot,
which was more consistent with the character of Skipping Rabbit than
herself, and rose at once to put it into execution. With a knife which
she carried in her girdle she cut and broke down the underwood at the
side of the track, and tramped about so as to make a great many
footmarks. Then, between that point and the thicket where her steed was
concealed, she walked to and fro several times, cutting and breaking the
branches as she went, so as to make a wide trail, and suggest the idea
of a hand-to-hand conflict having taken place there. She was enabled to
make these arrangements all the more easily that the moon was by that
time shining brightly, and revealing objects almost as clearly as if it
had been noonday.

Returning to the pass, she took off the kerchief with which she usually
bound up her luxuriant brown hair, and placed it in the middle of the
track, with her knife lying beside it. Having laid this wicked little
trap to her satisfaction, she retired to a knoll close at hand, from
which she could see her kerchief and knife on the one hand and her horse
on the other. Then she concealed herself behind the trunk of a tree.

Now it chanced at that very time that four of the young braves of
Bounding Bull's camp, who had been sent out to hunt were returning home
laden with venison, and they happened to cross the trail of Moonlight at
a considerable distance from the pass just mentioned. Few things escape
the notice of the red men of the west. On seeing the trail, they flung
down their loads, examined the prints of the hoofs, rose up, glared at
each other, and then ejaculated "Hough!" "Ho!" "Hi!" "Hee!"
respectively. After giving vent to these humorous observations, they
fixed the fresh meat in the forks of a tree, and, bending forward,
followed up the trail like bloodhounds.

Thus it happened that at the very time when Moonlight was preparing her
practical joke, or surprise, for Rushing River, these four young braves
were looking on with inexpressible astonishment, and preparing something
which would indeed be a surprise, but certainly no joke, to herself and
to all who might chance to appear upon the scene. With mouths open and
eyes stretched to the utmost, these Bounding Bullers--if we may so call
them--lay concealed behind a neighb