stige of uniform. Pray God he is safe!"

Will you follow Ray and see? Curiosity is what lures the fleetest deer
to death, and a more dangerous path than that which Ray has taken one
rarely follows. Will you try it, reader?--just you and I? Come on, then.
We'll see what our Kentucky boy "got in the draw," as he would put it.

Ray's footfall is soft as a kitten's as he creeps out upon the prairie;
Dandy stepping gingerly after him, wondering but obedient. For over a
hundred yards he goes, until both up- and down-stream he can almost see
the faint fires of the Indians in the timber. Farther out he can hear
hoof-beats and voices, so he edges along westward until he comes
suddenly to a depression, a little winding "cooley" across the prairie,
through which in the early spring the snows are carried off from some
ravine among the bluffs. Into this he noiselessly feels his way and
Dandy follows. He creeps along to his left and finds that its general
course is from the southwest. He knows well that the best way to watch
for objects in the darkness is to lie flat on low ground so that
everything approaching may be thrown against the sky. His plainscraft
tells him that by keeping in the water-course he will be less apt to be
seen, but will surely come across some lurking Indians. That he
expects. The thing is to get as far through them as possible before
being seen or heard, then mount and away. After another two minutes'
creeping he peers over the western bank. Now the fires up-stream can be
seen in the timber, and dim, shadowy forms pass and repass. Then close
at hand come voices and hoof-beats. Dandy pricks up his ears and wants
to neigh, but Ray grips his nostrils like a vice, and Dandy desists. At
rapid lope, within twenty yards, a party of half a dozen warriors go
bounding past on their way down the valley, and no sooner have they
crossed the gulley than he rises and rapidly pushes on up the dry sandy
bed. Thank heaven! there are no stones. A minute more and he is crawling
again, for the hoof-beats no longer drown the faint sound of Dandy's
movements. A few seconds more and right in front of him, not a stone's
throw away, he hears the deep tones of Indian voices in conversation.
Whoever they may be they are in the "cooley" and watching the prairie.
They can see nothing of him, nor he of them. Pass them in the
ten-foot-wide ravine he cannot. He must go back a short distance, make a
sweep to the east so as not to go between th