. His intent, brilliant eyes seemed
almost to listen as well as look, and though he sat his horse with
heedless grace and security, there was never a figure more ready for
vanishing upon the instant. He came a little nearer still, alert and
pretty as an inquisitive buck antelope, watching not the three soldiers
only, but everything else at once. He eyed their signs to dismount,
looked at their faces, considered, and with the greatest slowness got
off and came stalking to the fire. He was a fine tall man, and they
smiled and nodded at him, admiring his clean blankets and the
magnificence of his buckskin shirt and leggings.

"He's a jim-dandy," said Cumnor.

"You bet the girls think so," said Jones. "He gets his pick. For you're
a fighter too, ain't y'u?" he added, to E-egante.

"How! how!" said that personage, looking at them with grave affability
from the other side of the fire. Reassured presently, he accepted the
sergeant's pipe; but even while he smoked and responded to the gestures,
the alertness never left his eye, and his tall body gave no sense of
being relaxed. And so they all looked at each other across the waning
embers, while the old pack-mule moved about at the edge of camp,
crushing the crusted snow and pasturing along. After a time E-egante
gave a nod, handed the pipe back, and went into his thicket as he had
come. His visit had told him nothing; perhaps he had never supposed it
would, and came from curiosity. One person had watched this interview.
Sarah the squaw sat out in the night, afraid for her ancient hero; but
she was content to look upon his beauty, and go to sleep after he had
taken himself from her sight. The soldiers went to bed, and Keyser lay
wondering for a while before he took his nap between his surveillances.
The little breeze still passed at times, the running water and the ice
made sounds together, and he could hear the wandering bell, now distant
on the hill, irregularly punctuating the flight of the dark hours.

By nine next day there was the thicket sure enough, and the forty
waiting for the three hundred to come out of it. Then it became ten
o'clock, but that was the only difference, unless perhaps Sarah the
squaw grew more restless. The troopers stood ready to be told what to
do, joking together in low voices now and then; Crook sat watching Glynn
smoke; and through these stationary people walked Sarah, looking
wistfully at the thicket, and then at the faces of the adopted race