living man, and an honest one, I hope, I
saw, as the others did, running from the point of the steel blade, a
little trickling stream of red blood! It dropped in a stream, I say, and
fell on the white blanket upon which Orme was sitting. It stained the
blanket entirely red. At this sight the entire group broke apart, only a
few remaining to witness the rest of the scene.

I do not attempt to explain this illusion, or whatever it was. I do not
know how long it lasted; but presently, as I may testify, I saw Orme
rise and kick at the wetted, bloodstained blanket. He lifted it, heavy
with dripping blood. I saw the blood fall from its corners upon the
ground.

"Ah," he remarked, calmly, "it's getting dry now. Here is your knife, my
good fellow."

I looked about me, almost disposed to rub my eyes, as were, perhaps, the
others of our party. The same great plains were there, the same wide
shimmering stream, rippling in the sunlight, the same groups of animals
grazing on the bluff, the same sentinels outlined against the sky. Over
all shone the blinding light of the Western mid-day sun. Yet, as Orme
straightened out this blanket, it was white as it had been before!
Auberry looked at his knife blade as though he would have preferred to
throw it away, but he sheathed it and it fitted the sheath as before.

Orme smiled at us all pleasantly. "Do you believe in the Indian
telegraph now?" he inquired.

I have told you many things of this strange man, Gordon Orme, and I
shall need to tell yet others. Sometimes my friends smile at me even yet
over these things. But since that day, I have not doubted the tales old
Auberry told me of our own Indians. Since then, too, I have better
understood Gordon Orme and his strange personality, the like of which I
never knew in any land.

CHAPTER XXI

TWO IN THE DESERT

How long it was I hardly knew, for I had slink into a sort of dull
apathy in which one day was much like another; but at last we gathered
our crippled party together and broke camp, our wounded men in the
wagons, and so slowly passed on westward, up the trail. We supposed,
what later proved to be true, that the Sioux had raided in the valley on
both sides of us, and that the scattered portions of the army had all
they could do, while the freight trains were held back until the road
was clear.

I wearied of the monotony of wagon travel, and without council with any,
finally, weak as I was, called for my horse and rod