The concealed friends and their horses stood motionless, as the Indian stepped with light feet along the farther shore of the little river. He was a magnificent specimen of the American Indian; lithe, as well as muscular, his body straight as an arrow, his limbs sinewy, yet so gracefully and evenly developed that they would have done as models for a sculptor or a painter. Buffalo Bill looked at the Blackfoot with admiration, regarding him at the moment merely as a fine specimen of Indian manhood, forgetting in that momentary enthusiasm what his appearance there meant, and what was denoted by the paint and the floating feathers. The Indian stared hard at the trees which concealed the scout and the trapper. He neither saw nor heard anything there. On the ground between the river and the grove there was not so much as an indentation in the soil to suggest that horses had passed that way. “Whoa, Nebby, consarn ye!” Nomad whispered to his horse; for Nebby’s ears were pricked up and his big eyes were staring. Indians frightened him, for which Nomad was responsible, for he had taught the old horse to fear them. “Nebby is better’n any watchdog,” was Nomad’s boast. “No Injun kin come nigh him without him makin’ a hullabaloo.” This tendency to make a “hullabaloo” when he saw an Indian had its disadvantages at times, as at present; yet the whispered adjurations of old Nomad, and the touch of his hand, kept the horse quiet as the Blackfoot passed along. As for the scout’s horse, though it had not Nebby’s peculiar tendency, there was, nevertheless, danger that it would make a noise of some kind, hence the scout kept his hand on its nose. After staring hard at the grove, and scanning the soil by the stream, the Blackfoot went on, and soon he was lost to sight in a bend of the cañon. “A close shave!” said the scout. “And a healthy one fer thet red nigger, Buffler,” said Nomad meaningly. “I’d hate fer him to ’a’ smelt us out hyar, fer then I’d had to shot him. And that would ’a’ made a tarnal noise, too.” “Yes; we’d have been in for a fight.” “Thar’s more of ’em about, Buffler.” “They may be a good deal scattered, though; so we may see only this fellow.” “I’m hopin’ it, Buffler.” They saw another, in a very few seconds, on their side of the stream. He was armed and painted like the one who had just disappeared, but he was not so tall and handsome. His body was shorter and thicker, his arms longer, his sheer physical strength greater. He could not have run like the one who had just gone on, but in a rough-and-tumble fight he would have been an enemy more to be feared. He not only looked at the grove where the white men were hidden with their horses, but he walked a few yards toward it, looking carefully at the ground.