He had no plan of procedure, so quite naturally he first made for the Agency. The Agent was not there; but he found Bill Ames, the post trader, at home. Bill had seen no strangers in the last week or two. Maybe Thunder Bird had. Indians never talked much. Johnny could ask him. The old chief and his sons were killing rabbits down below. Down below Johnny went. “How, chief?” he greeted the old man, a creature of unassailable dignity even in his rags. “You catch ’em rabbits, eh?” “Nah! Boy catch ’em. Me too old.” There was a note of resignation in the old chief’s answer quite beyond what the words themselves convey. Men said that Thunder Bird remembered the Forty-Niners and the Donner party. It might have been even as they said, for there was a look in the chief’s eyes as old as the beginning of time. Johnny spread his blanket and beckoned to the aged Indian to be seated. This formality accomplished, the boy opened a tin of tobacco and poured its contents on to the blanket. With his fingers he divided it. Not in equal portions. Oh, no! As he originally poured the piles they were approximately even, but without glancing up the boy kept on transferring small pinches of the tobacco from his own to the chief’s portion until Thunder Bird’s share was four times Johnny’s. Then he produced cigarette papers, and from his share rolled cigarettes for the old man. To attempt to describe the expression on Thunder Bird’s face as he watched Johnny would be wasted effort. The chief’s hair was white, his face gaunt, shriveled; his jaws toothless; if such a combination can mirror the innocence of childhood it was achieved in the old Piute. In back of him, at a respectable distance, Thunder Bird’s squaw sat, expressionless, watching the dumb show. “_Hé_,” the old man grunted at last. “Mebbe you come look for mine this time.” “No look for mine, Thunder Bird. Look for stranger—white man. You see him on Reservation last two moons?” The Indian did not answer for several minutes. Then: “No see um stranger.” “Rode a stallion, big horse—a roan,” Johnny persisted. “Spanish horse, eh?” “That’s it—Spanish.” “Mebbe I see um.” A pause, and then a shrug of the shoulders. “No can tell. Too old. Why you want um? Steal horse?” Johnny tried hard to conceal his impatience. “No steal ’em horse,” he answered. Johnny spread his fingers, palms up. “Him friend—_un ladrón le ha muerto_!” “Ah, nah—dead?” For an instant the old chief’s eyes seemed to lose their guile. Johnny’s pulse quickened at what he thought was a note of concern in Thunder Bird’s voice. “Dead,” he repeated. “Maybe you see him, Thunder Bird?” “Mebbe so boy see um,” the chief countered. “You come tomorrow, eh?”