ined horses hidden in the cottonwoods never stirred. "Lie low!
lie low!" breathed the plainsman to his companions.

Throb of hoofs again became audible, not loud and madly pounding as
those that had passed, but low, muffled, rhythmic. Jones's sharp eye,
through a peephole in the thicket, saw a cream-colored mustang bob over
the knoll, carrying an Indian. Another and another, then a swiftly
following, close-packed throng appeared. Bright red feathers and white
gleamed; weapons glinted; gaunt, bronzed savage leaned forward on racy,
slender mustangs.

The plainsman shrank closer to the ground. "Apache!" he exclaimed to
himself, and gripped his rifle. The band galloped down to the hollow,
and slowing up, piled single file over the bank. The leader, a short,
squat chief, plunged into the brake not twenty yards from the hidden
men. Jones recognized the cream mustang; he knew the somber, sinister,
broad face. It belonged to the Red Chief of the Apaches.

"Geronimo!" murmured the plainsman through his teeth.

Well for the Apache that no falcon savage eye discovered aught strange
in the little hollow! One look at the sand of the stream bed would have
cost him his life. But the Indians crossed the thicket too far up; they
cantered up the slope and disappeared. The hoof-beats softened and
ceased.

"Gone?" whispered Rude.

"Gone. But wait," whispered Jones. He knew the savage nature, and he
knew how to wait. After a long time, he cautiously crawled out of the
thicket and searched the surroundings with a plainsman's eye. He
climbed the slope and saw the clouds of dust, the near one small, the
far one large, which told him all he needed to know.

"Comanches?" queried Adams, with a quaver in his voice. He was new to
the plains.

"Likely," said Jones, who thought it best not to tell all he knew. Then
he added to himself: "We've no time to lose. There's water back here
somewhere. The Indians have spotted the buffalo, and were running the
horses away from the water."

The three got under way again, proceeding carefully, so as not to raise
the dust, and headed due southwest. Scantier and scantier grew the
grass; the hollows were washes of sand; steely gray dunes, like long,
flat, ocean swells, ribbed the prairie. The gray day declined. Late
into the purple night they traveled, then camped without fire.

In the gray morning Jones climbed a high ride and scanned the
southwest. Low dun-colored sandhills waved from him down and do