blowing dust from his nostrils. Pink went up to him and slipped a rope
around his neck. "Where's that bell?" he called out in his soft treble.
"Or do you think we better tie the old son-of-a-gun up and be sure of
him?"

"Aw," said Happy Jack disgustedly a few minutes later, when the Happy
Family had crawled out of their ambush and were feeling particularly
foolish. "Nex' time old granny Furrman says Injuns t' this bunch,
somebody oughta gag him."

"I notice you waited till he'd gone outa hearing before you said that,"
Luck told him drily. "We're going to put out extra guards tonight, just
the same. And I guess you can stand the first shift, Happy, up there on
the ridge--you're so sure of things!"

CHAPTER XV. "NOW, DANG IT, RIDE!"

Indians are Indians, though they wear the green sweater and overalls of
civilization and set upon their black hair the hat made famous by John
B. Stetson. You may meet them in town and think them tamed to stupidity.
You may travel out upon their reservations and find them shearing sheep
or hoeing corn or plodding along the furrow, plowing their fields; or
you may watch them dancing grotesquely in their festivals, and still
think that civilization is fast erasing the savage instincts from their
natures. You will be partly right--but you will also be partly mistaken.
An Indian is always an Indian, and a Navajo Indian carries a thinner
crust of civilization than do some others; as I am going to illustrate.

As you have suspected, the Happy Family was not following the trail of
Ramon Chavez and his band. Ramon was a good many miles away in another
direction; unwittingly the Happy Family was keeping doggedly upon the
trail of a party of renegade Navajos who had been out on a thieving
expedition among those Mexicans who live upon the Rio Grande bottomland.
Having plenty of reasons for hurrying back to their stronghold, and
having plenty of lawlessness to account for, when they realized that
they were being followed by nine white men who had four packed horses
with them to provide for their needs on a long journey, it was no more
than natural that the Indians should take it for granted that they were
being pursued, and that if they were caught they would be taken back
to town and shut up in that evil place which the white men called their
jail.

When it was known that the nine men who followed had twice recovered the
trail after sheep and cattle had trampled it out, the renegades became