he trail must have been
disconcerting to the man, but not one word did he say in reference to
it.

After he had gone, Faye went over to the company, where he remained some
time, and I learned later that he had been giving the first sergeant
careful instructions for the next day. I could not sleep that night
because of horrible dreams--dreams of long, yellow snakes with fiery
eyes crawling through green grass. I have thought so many times since of
how perfectly maddening it must have been to those horse thieves to have
twenty-two nice fat mules and three horses brought almost within the
shadow of their very own stockade, and yet have it so impossible to
gather them in!

At the appointed time the buckskin-man appeared the following morning
on a beautiful chestnut horse with fancy bridle and Mexican saddle, and
with him came a friend, his "pal" he told Faye, who was much older and
was a sullen, villainous-looking man. Both were armed with rifles and
pistols, but there was nothing remarkable in that; in this country it
is a necessity. We started off very much as usual, except that Faye kept
rather close to the "pal," which left Bettie and me alone most of the
time, just a little at one side. I noticed that directly back of the
horse thieves walked a soldier, armed with rifle and pistol, and Faye
told me that night that he was one of the best sharpshooters in the
Army, and that he was back of those men with orders to shoot them down
like dogs if they made one treacherous move. The buckskin man was one of
the most graceful riders I ever saw, and evidently loved his fine mount,
as I saw him stroke his neck several times--and the man himself was
certainly handsome.

Faye had told me that I must not question anything he might tell me
to do, so after we had crossed the valley and gone up the mountains a
little distance he called to me in a voice unnecessarily loud, that I
must be tired riding so far, and had better get in the ambulance for
a while. I immediately dismounted, and giving the bridle rein to a
soldier, I waited for the ambulance to come up. As I got in, I felt that
perhaps I was doing the first act in an awful tragedy. The horsemen and
wagons had stopped during the minute or two I was getting in, but I saw
soldiers moving about, and just as soon as I was seated I looked out to
see what was going on.

A splendid old sergeant was going to the front with four soldiers, whom
I knew were men to be trusted, each one wi