“What is it? What’s the matter?” stammered Left-over, struggling to sit up, while he blinked, red-eyed. “Better take his tail for your scalp, Left-over,” bade Jim. “It’s a pity we don’t need meat, but you can butcher him if you want to.” Not for some weeks did the Hee-Haw outfit get done teasing Left-over about his “Injuns.” “Anyway,” soothed Mr. Baxter, “you made a good shot. Nobody can deny you that.” “Huh!” agreed Left-over, swelling importantly. “I knew it was something, and I drew bead and whaled away.” “Purty good to draw bead in the dark,” remarked Captain Hi. “Left-over must have eyes like a cat!” They ate a rather scant breakfast, mostly cold; and leaving the luckless calf (which must have wandered from some emigrant party) minus a few steaks, they turned northwest on the cut-off to the next water. The stage route went straight on, over a bare plateau; but a number of emigrants evidently had been turning off here on a trail of their own. So sandy was the soil and so hot the sun that very soon the ground was as dry as before, and Billy’s boast of “plenty water” failed to make good. About the middle of the morning they passed an emigrant train of a large party still recovering from the storm. Wagons had been capsized, tents torn up bodily, and equipage scattered far and wide. One wagon had been carried away completely. “How far to the mountains, strangers?” queried one of the emigrants. It was the same old question. All the Pike’s Peak travellers appeared to have the one thing in mind――the mountains. “Follow us and you’ll get thar,” replied Captain Hi. “What do you know about this cut-off?” “Nothing at all, stranger. There looked as if somebody had gone up this way, so we came too.” “It’s a terrible dry road, though,” sighed a woman. “Maybe if we’d have kept on west we’d have done better.” “Well, by jiminy!” said Hi, as the Hee-Haws toiled on. “I sort of think so, myself. This trail doesn’t look good to me; not a little bit.” “Shall we turn back?” proposed Mr. Baxter. “I hate to turn back,” spoke Billy promptly. “I like to keep a-going.” “Oh, we might as well go on,” added Jim. “I hate to back track, too. But there aren’t many emigrants on this trail, that’s certain.” “The trouble is they’ll follow like sheep,” asserted the Reverend. “If this cut-off is no good somebody ought to put a sign on it.” Hotter and hotter grew the day. The trail, which was not so large after the emigrant party had been passed, wound among blistering sand-hills, and soon the mules were plodding doggedly, with tongues out, hides lathering. They guided themselves, for the Reverend, whose turn it was to drive, had mercy on them and walked. That night at camp he uttered a sudden exclamation. “Water’s more than half gone, boys,” he announced. “Either this keg leaks or the air drinks faster than we do.” “We’ll have to be easy on water, then,” ordered Captain Hi. And they all went to bed thirsty.