“No, you won’t,” retorted Hi, quickly. “Then he’ll want something else. Here, you――” and he spoke in earnest to the chief. “Puckachee!” And Hi waved his hand and patted his yager meaningly. “Get! All of you! No soog, no tobac’, nothing. Keep close to the wagon, boys,” he warned to his party, “and show ’em we mean business. Drive the mules right along, Dave.” He shouted to the advanced Indians: “No! No!” And facing about shifted his gun as for action. The chief had paused, uncertain; and now his followers paused. The Hee-Haw wagon, flanked by its body-guard, with the mules snorting and straining but controlled by Davy, pressed on. In a moment the chief rode back to his band, and all went cantering away. “Lucky for them they didn’t try to make us trouble,” boasted Left-over, changing his tune but still suspiciously pale. “We’d have shown ’em!” “Lucky for us, you mean,” growled Hi. “If once those fellows had got in amongst us and started to crowding us thar’s no knowing what mightn’t have happened. That’s the mistake lots of these emigrants make. They try to parley and give presents, thinking they’re buying the Injuns off; and fust thing they know they’re overrun and helpless and lose their whole outfit.” “Were you scared up there, Dave?” called Billy. “No. Were you down there?” retorted Dave. “Not so anybody noticed it, I hope,” answered Billy. “Well, one thing’s certain,” said Jim. “We’ve got wuss ahead of us than Injuns, I reckon. Water’s petered out.” Before their eyes the shallow head-waters of the Smoky Hill Fork disappeared abruptly, as if soaking down through the sand of its bed. Davy checked his mules while Hi and the others surveyed before. Not a token of water showed beyond or as far as they could see. Billy Cody had promptly trudged on in the advance; and now he shouted and waved. “Trail forks,” he reported. “One fork keeps on, other turns off to the right.” “We’ll follow that right fork as far as we can before dark,” quoth Hi. “How’s the water bar’l? Fill her up.” The Reverend Mr. Baxter sprang to the river bed and with the camp spade dug vigorously. The others took pails and pans and kettles and carried water, as fast as the hole supplied it, to the big cask that, slung fast at the rear of the wagon, formed part of the trail kit. It was slow work filling this cask through the bung-hole, but Hi kept them at it until the cask was well-nigh running over. By this time dusk was settling, and with a shrewd glance about at the landscape Captain Hi said: “Unspan, boys. We might as well camp right hyar. But it’s mighty poor grazing for the mules, I tell you!” XII PERILS FOR THE HEE-HAWS Many emigrants had camped here, evidently. The grass had been eaten off for several acres around, and Davy roamed in a circle of a quarter of a mile before he had gleaned enough buffalo chips for the supper fire.