regarded him frowningly, gave a little snort, and turned
away. Donny in that mood was not to be easily placated, and certainly
not to be ignored. He went over to the little flat, and selected Jack's
horse, saddled him, and discovered that it had certain well-defined race
prejudices, and would not let Peppajee put foot to the stirrup. Keno
he knew would be no more tractable, so that he finally slapped Jack's
saddle on Huckleberry, and so got Peppajee mounted and headed toward
camp.

"You tell Jack I borrowed his saddle and Huckleberry," he called out to
the drooping little figure on the rock. "But I'll get back before they
want to go home."

But Donny was glooming over his wrongs, and neither heard nor wanted
to hear. Having for his legacy a temper cumulative in its heat, he was
coming rapidly to the point where he, too, started home, and left no
word or message behind; a trivial enough incident in itself, but one
which opened the way for some misunderstanding and fruitless speculation
upon the part of Evadna.

CHAPTER XIII. CLOUD-SIGN VERSUS CUPID

Few men are ever called upon by untoward circumstance to know the
sensations caused by rattlesnake bite, knife gashes, impromptu
cauterization, and, topping the whole, the peculiar torture of congested
veins and swollen muscles which comes from a tourniquet. The
feeling must be unpleasant in the extreme, and the most morbid of
sensation-seekers would scarcely put himself in the way of that
particular experience.

Peppajee Jim, therefore, had reason in plenty for glowering at the world
as he saw it that day. He held Huckleberry rigidly down to his laziest
amble that the jar of riding might be lessened, kept his injured foot
free from the stirrup, and merely grunted when Good Indian asked him
once how he felt.

When they reached the desolation of the old placer-pits, however, he
turned his eyes from the trail where it showed just over Huckleberry's
ears, and regarded sourly the deep gashes and dislodged bowlders which
told where water and the greed of man for gold had raged fiercest. Then,
for the first time during the whole ride, he spoke.

"All time, yo' sleepum," he said, in the sonorous, oracular tone which
he usually employed when a subject held his serious thought. "Peaceful
Hart, him all same sleepum. All same sleepum 'longside snake. No seeum
snake, no thinkum mebbyso catchum bite." He glanced down at his own
snake-bitten foot. "Snake bite, make all time m