re the pursuers had apparently come up with the wagons, and
circled out upon either side. From their ponies' tracks there must have
been a dozen in the band. Perhaps a hundred yards further along lay
two dead ponies. Keith examined them closely--both had been ridden with
saddles, the marks of the cinches plainly visible. Evidently one of the
wagon mules had also dropped in the traces here, and had been dragged
along by his mates. Just beyond came a sudden depression in the prairie
down which the wagons had plunged so heavily as to break one of the
axles; the wheel lay a few yards away, and, somewhat to the right, there
lay the wreck of the wagon itself, two dead mules still in the traces,
the vehicle stripped of contents and charred by fire. A hundred feet
farther along was the other wagon, its tongue broken, the canvas top
ripped open, while between the two were scattered odds and ends of
wearing apparel and provisions, with a pile of boxes smoking grimly. The
remaining mules were gone, and no semblance of life remained anywhere.
Keith dropped his reins over his horse's head, and, with Winchester
cocked and ready, advanced cautiously.

Death from violence had long since become almost a commonplace
occurrence to Keith, yet now he shrank for an instant as his eyes
perceived the figure of a man lying motionless across the broken wagon
tongue. The grizzled hair and beard were streaked with blood, the face
almost unrecognizable, while the hands yet grasped a bent and shattered
rifle. Evidently the man had died fighting, beaten down by overwhelming
numbers after expending his last shot. Then those fiends had scalped
and left him where he fell. Fifty feet beyond, shot in the back, lay a
younger man, doubled up in a heap, also scalped and dead. That was all;
Keith scouted over a wide circle, even scanning the stretch of gravel
under the river bank, before he could fully satisfy himself there were
no others in the party. It seemed impossible that these two travelling
alone would have ventured upon such a trip in the face of known Indian
hostility. Yet they must have done so, and once again his lips muttered:

"Of all the blame fools!"

Suddenly he halted, staring about over the prairie, obsessed by a new
thought, an aroused suspicion. There had appeared merely the hoof-prints
of the one horse alongside of the fleeing wagons when they first turned
out from the trail, and that horse had been newly shod. But there were
two dead