Hickok became absorbed in his surroundings, and wondered why he and Buffalo Bill had not discovered some evidence of these war parties when they had studied the plain before night. He decided that the surface must be more uneven than it looked from this commanding position. He heard only the occasional snarl of a prowling coyote and the whispering breeze in the dead husks of the weeds. And then he suddenly realized that he no longer heard the grubbing of the horses. He listened intently for some moments, but if the horses were still there they had satisfied their hunger, and were quietly enjoying the rest after a hard day’s work. From the gulch came no sound, and at last the Laramie man stole cautiously down toward the spot where he had left the horses. He found the place easily enough, but both animals were gone. “That is odd, not to say mysterious,” muttered Hickok. “I never had a horse slip his lariat before.” He searched for the pins, and at last found one--with a short piece of the riata still attached. He felt of the end--_it had been cut_. The Laramie man clinched his fists in silent fury. “A sneaking red thief has crawled right up under my nose and stolen my horse and Buffalo Bill’s,” he ground between his teeth. To think of retaking the horses was next to a hopeless task. Perhaps they had been gone half an hour--long enough for an Indian to have led them beyond hearing and then galloped several miles. “What will Cody think?” was the thought uppermost in Hickok’s mind. “He’ll think I went to sleep and let the redskins get away with the horses without so much as ‘by your leave.’” And then the plainsman’s mind was settled. “I’ll bring those horses or I’ll never come back,” he said in a low tone, for all the Laramie man’s determination was aroused. He tore the lariat pin from the ground, pulled the piece of rope from the pin, and stuffed it into his pocket. He then searched for the other, found it, and served it in the same way. “I won’t leave those telltale things behind,” he said. At first Hickok attempted to pick up and follow the trail, but in the heavy pall of darkness he found that impossible, as he knew beforehand it would be. Then he started toward the nearest point where a signal light had flared. He proceeded carefully, aware that at any moment he might blunder upon a group of silent savages in the grass. Once a whirr at his side caused him to bound away from a cactus, where he had disturbed a rattler. Frequently he stumbled in the open doorways of prairie-dog villages, and at another time a wriggling thing under his foot felt as large as a cat. It was probably a bull snake, which, cloyed with its early evening meal, had been taking a nap in the pathway of the lone plainsman. After probably two hours of this, Hickok seemed to have reached the rim of a little valley, for there, seemingly far below him, were the twinkling fires of an Indian encampment.