t any idee of how an autyMObile clumb that there rim-rock?"

Old Applehead, squatting on his heels across the little camp-fire,
leaned and picked a coal out of the ashes for his pipe and afterwards
cocked his eyes toward Big Medicine.

"What yuh calc'late yuh tryin' to do?" he inquired pettishly. "Start
up an argyment uh some kind? Cause if ye air, lemme tell yuh I got the
yer-ache from listenin' to you las' night."

Big Medicine looked at him as though he was going to spring upon him in
deadly combat--but that was only a peculiar facial trick of his. What
he did do was to pour that last swallow of hot, black coffee down his
throat and then laugh his big haw-haw-haw that could be heard half a
mile off.

"Y' oughta kep Applehead to home with the wimmin folks, Luck," he bawled
unabashed. "Night air's bad fer 'im, and the trail ain't goin' to be
smooth goin',--not if we gotta ride our hawses straight up, by cripes!"

"We haven't got to." Luck balanced his slice of bacon upon the
unscorched side of a bannock and glanced indifferently at the rim of
rock that was worrying the other. "I swung down here to make camp off
the trail But it's only a half mile or so over this rise that looks
level to you, to where the lava ledge peters out so we can ride over it
easier than we rode up off the river-flat in that loose sand. That ease
your mind any?"

"Helps some," Big Medicine admitted, his eyes going speculatively to the
rise that looked perfectly level. "I'm willin' to take your word fer
it, boss. But what's gittin' to worry me, by cripes, is all this here
war-talk about Injuns. Honest to grandma, I feel like as if I'd been
readin'--"

"Aw, it's jest a josh, Bud!" Happy Jack asserted boredly. "I betche
there ain't been a Injun on the fight here sence hell was a tradin'
post!"

"You think there hasn't?" Luck looked up quickly to ask. But old
Applehead rose up and shook an indignant finger at Happy Jack.

"There ain't, hey? Well, I calc'late that fer a josh, them thar Navvies
has got a right keen sense uh humor, and I've knowed men to laff
theirselves to death on their danged resavation--now I'm tellin' yuh I
It was all a josh mebby, when they riz up a year or two back 'cause one
uh their tribe was goin' t' be arrested er some darn thing! Ole General
Scott, he didn't call it no joke when he, went in thar to settle 'em
down, did he? I calc'late, mebby it was jest fer a josh them troops
waited on the aidge, ready to go in if