spent some moments in silent
contemplation of the savages' handiwork. "He certainly hasn't had time
enough to follow the trail clear to those plains."

"Of course not," answered George. "But he probably followed it far
enough to see that it leads in that direction."

"Well, explain another thing while you are about it," continued Bob. "I
have been out on a scout before now after the hostiles, following a
trail that was as plain as the nose on one's face, when all at once the
scout would leave that trail and strike off over the prairie where
there wasn't a sign of a pony-track."

"He was taking a short cut on the Indians," observed George.

"I know that, and sooner or later he would bring us back to that trail
again; and sometimes we would have gained so much on the hostiles--who
had perhaps been twenty-four hours' journey ahead of us when we left the
trail--that we would find their camp-fires still smoking. Now, what I
want to know is this: How did that scout know that those Indians were
going to that particular spring or creek or ravine near which we found
the trail?"

"Have you ever hunted foxes?" asked George.

"I should say I had. When I left home I owned a hound that couldn't be
beaten in running them, for he was posted in all their tricks. But what
have foxes to do with hostile Indians?"

"I am simply going to use the tricks of the one, which you understand,
to explain the tricks of the other, which you do not understand,"
replied George. "They are a good deal alike in some respects. A fox,
when he finds himself hard pressed, will resort to all sorts of
manoeuvres to throw the hounds off the trail. One of his tricks is to
run over a newly-ploughed field, if he can find one, where the scent
will not lie. What would that brag hound of yours do in such a case?
Would he waste valuable time in running about over that field trying to
pick up a scent that wasn't there?"

"No, he wouldn't. He would run around the outside of the field until he
found the place where the fox left it."

"Exactly. Now, an Indian is just as full of tricks as a fox is. When he
is afraid of pursuit he will break his party up into small bands, and,
although the trails made by these bands will lead in different
directions at the start, you will find, if you break up your own party
and follow them for a while, that they all tend toward the same points,
where these little bands will all be reunited. Of course each of the
trails will be obl