them of their
clothes, stolen their guns and ammunition and furs, and gone off to hunt
new booty. In this case it promised to be Elam, who made a desperate
fight of it. The young hunter resolved that he would go into camp, and
he did, too, hitching his horse near the stream that ran through the
valley, just out of sight of the massacred men. He saw no ghosts, but
slept as placidly as if the field on which the savages had vented their
spite was a hundred miles away.

When he awoke, it was dark, and the peaceful moon was shining down upon
him through the tree-tops. He watered his horse, ate what was left of
the lunch, and began to work his way out of the valley, when he
discovered that both his nag and himself were sore from the effects of
their long run. He had gone a long distance out of his way to see what
the Cheyennes had done, and he didn't feel like bracing up to face the
eighty miles before him. His horse didn't feel like it either, for when
he stopped and allowed him to have his own way, he hung his head down
and went to sleep. The horse seemed to be rendered uneasy by the bandage
he wore round his neck, and when it was taken off he was more at his
ease.

It took Elam two days to make the journey to the camp where he had left
Tom Mason, for he did all of his travelling during the daytime, and
stopped over at some convenient place for the night. He was getting
hungry, but his horse was growing stronger everyday. He dared not shoot
at any of the numerous specimens of the jack-rabbit which constantly
dodged across his path, for fear that he would betray himself to some
marauding band of Indians, and not until he got within sight of Tom
Mason standing in the edge of the willows did he feel comparatively
safe. Tom gazed in astonishment while he told his story, and it was a
long time before he could get dinner enough to satisfy him.

"Thank goodness they have left you all right," said Elam, settling back
on his blanket with a hunk of corn bread and bacon in his uninjured hand
and a cup of steaming coffee in front of him. "Do you know that I have
worried about you more than I have about myself?"

"Well, how did those Indians look when they were following you?" asked
Tom, who had not yet recovered himself. His hand trembled when he poured
out the coffee so that one would think that he was the one who had had a
narrow escape from the savages. "Did they yell?"

"Yell? Of course it came faintly to my ears because they