“Squaw trail!” he declared, something of scorn in his tone, for he held to the Indian notion that a squaw is an inferior creature. It did not please him to think he had been following the trail of one; there was no honor in it. “All same only squaw, Pa-e-has-ka.” The rider whose pony they had been following had there dismounted, for some reason, and the prints of small moccasins were visible in the sand. The tracks had been overlooked by the marshal’s men when they came that way. Tom Conover stared down at the marks pointed out by little Cayuse, while the grip on his bridle rein tightened and his face became suddenly an ashen gray, with all the high color driven out of it. At the instant no one was looking at him; all were staring, like him, at the small footprints pointed out by the Piute boy. Buffalo Bill swung from the back of his horse and carefully examined the tracks. “The moccasins of an Indian woman,” he said; “yet the tracks don’t seem exactly like those of an Indian. We can’t tell though, for she didn’t walk about, to give us much of a line on that.” Nomad drove old Hide-rack closer in and peered down, wrinkling his brows. “It couldn’t have been an Injun boy, eh, Buffler?” he said. “It might have been a boy; but he was wearing a woman’s moccasins, if so.” “Waugh! Yer right, Buffler. Yer kin see thar whar ther fringe o’ beads an’ quills cut inter ther sand at ther side o’ ther track; an Injun buck, er even er boy, wouldn’t wear ther likes o’ thet, particularly when on a difficult trail. All o’ ther female kind loves ornaments, and sometimes it tell agin’ ’em, as hyar. Et war shore a woman, Buffler; even an Injun boy wouldn’t wore a thick bead an’ quill fringe like thet on the sides of his moccasins.” Conover took no part in the conversation, but kept his horse back, and apparently gave scant attention to the tracks in the sand. But it was the subject of lively discussion, as the trailers continued on their way. Finding the spot where the trail of the woman—they were almost sure it was a woman—entered the main beaten trail, they kept a close watch on each side to see when the pony tracks left it. When they found them they were much nearer the dreaded Cumbres Mountains, and night was at hand. They stopped, on finding a water hole, and went into camp. Nothing was to be accomplished by hastening on in the darkness. In doing that, they might miss the trail altogether, though it seemed now to point straight to the notch before them, which for some time they had seen, and which appeared to lead directly toward the heart of the Cumbres. It was the mountain notch which Tom Conover had stared at so hard and often when he was shooting the queen of hearts into tatters before the mesquite bush just outside the town of Skyline. Tom Conover was so silent that evening round the hidden camp fire that it was noticeable. Nomad spoke of it, in an aside, to Wild Bill: