ere for another hour. Don't yuh hear the bell?"

They all listened for a minute. The intermittent tinkle of the cheap
little sheep bell came plainly to them from farther down the draw as
though Johnny was eating contentedly with his mates, thankful for the
leisure and the short, sweet grass that was better than hay. Pink lay
back with a sigh of relief, and Luck told him to sleep a little if he
wanted to, because everything was all right and he would call him if the
horses got to straying too far off.

Down the draw--where there were no horses feeding--an Indian in dirty
overalls and gingham shirt and moccasins, and with his hair bobbed to
his collar, stood up and peered toward the vague figures grouped in the
fire-glow. He lifted his hand and moved it slightly, so that the bell he
was holding tinkled exactly as it had done when it was strapped around
Johnny's neck; Johnny, who was at that moment trailing disgustedly over
a ridge half a mile away with his mates, driven by two horsemen who rode
very carefully, so as to make no noise.

The figures settled back reassured, and the Indian grinned sourly and
tinkled the little bell painstakingly, with the matchless patience of
the Indian. It was an hour before he dimly saw Pink get up from the
dying coals and mount his horse. Then, still tinkling the bell as a
feeding horse would have made it ring, he moved slowly down the draw;
slowly, so that Pink did not at first suspect that the bell sounded
farther off than before; slowly yet surely, leading Pink farther and
farther in the hope of speedily overtaking the horses that he cursed for
their wandering.

Pink wondered, after a little, what was the matter with the darned
things, wandering off like that by themselves, and with no possible
excuse that he could see. For some time he was not uneasy; he expected
to overtake them within the next five or ten minutes. They would stop to
feed, surely, or to look back and listen--in a strange country like this
it was against horse-nature that they should wander far away at night
unless they were thirsty and on the scent of water. These horses had
drunk their fill at the little pool below the spring. They should
be feeding now, or they should lie down and sleep, or stand up and
sleep--anything but travel like this, deliberately away from camp.

Pink tried loping, but the ground was too treacherous and his horse too
leg-weary to handle its feet properly in the dark. It stumbled several