The stars shone that night in the cloudless northern sky in all their accustomed brilliancy, and the long-drawn out summer twilight, never reaching more than semi-darkness, rendered the surroundings indistinctly visible. Peter Hourie’s played-out pony had been replaced by a captured rebel broncho, unused to the restraint of harness and shafts; commissions had faithfully been executed, the last outpost had bidden us a cheery good-night, and we were bowling along smoothly towards the _Northcote_. The partially broken broncho, however, did not take kindly to anything like work, and so soon as this one began to realize the ignominy of its task it started in to cavort and swerve around and despite the united efforts of Macleod and myself, we soon found ourselves off the trail. While Macleod held the fractious beast, I groped about in the darkness for the wagon tracks, and having found them, soon lost them again, only to recover and again lose them more frequently than I can now remember. A dim light in the distance was the first indication of anybody’s presence but our own. Macleod couldn’t see it until we were within a few hundred yards of an Indian camp fire carefully secreted in one of the bluffs. We—in some trepidation, so far as I was concerned—managed to make a wide detour and just as we were beginning to congratulate ourselves that we had avoided these emissaries of the enemy, a cry like that of a bittern gave warning that the Indians were signalling to one another. Macleod intimated that I and the broncho and the buckboard should make for a particular bluff which he pointed out, and he would remain where he was and await developments. Then came the bad half-hour of loneliness and anxiety and misgiving for we knew not our exact location—nor the whereabouts of the foe. After what seemed an age, Macleod caught up to me, and reported that we had evidently not been observed.