ck. "They're cunnin'," he hissed warningly. "Don't yuh be fooled--"

"That's Johnny in the lead," Pink whispered excitedly. "I'd know the way
he walks--"

"'N' you THOUGHT yuh knowed how he jingled his dang bell," Applehead
retorted unkindly. "Sh-sh-sh--"

Reminded by the taunt of the clever trick that had been played upon
them the night before, the Happy Family stiffened again into strained,
waiting silence, their rifles aimed straight at the advancing objects.
These, still vague in the first real darkness of early night, moved
steadily in a scattered group behind a leader that was undoubtedly
Johnny of the erstwhile tinkling bell. He circled the campfire just
without its radius of light, so that they could not tell whether an
Indian lay along his back, and beaded straight for the water-hole. The
others followed him, and not one came into the firelight--a detail which
sharpened the suspicions of the men crouched there in the edge of the
bushes, and tingled their nerves with the sense of something sinister in
the very unconcernedness of the animals.

They splashed into the water-hole and drank thirstily and long. They
stood there as though they were luxuriating in the feel of more water
than they could drink, and one horse blew the moisture from his nostrils
with a sound that made Happy Jack jump.

After a few minutes that seemed an hour to those who waited with fingers
crooked upon gun-triggers, the horse that looked vaguely like Johnny
turned away from the water-hole and sneezed while he appeared to be
wondering what to do next. He moved slowly toward the packs that were
thrown down just where they had been taken from the horses, and began
nosing tentatively about.

The others loitered still at the water-hole, save one--the buckskin, by
his lighter look in the dark--that came over to Johnny. The two horses
nosed the packs. A dull sound of clashing metal came to the ears of the
Happy Family.

"Hey! Get outa that grain, doggone your fool hide," Pink called out
impulsively, crawling over his saddle and catching his foot in the
stirrup leather so that he came near going headlong.

Applehead yelled something, but Pink had recovered his balance and
was running to save the precious horsefeed from waste, and Johnny from
foundering. There might have been two Indiana on every horse in sight,
but Pink was not thinking of that possibility just then.

Johnny whirled guiltily away from the grain bag, licking his lips and