“Listen to the innocent, would you, Ad?” he remarked, in half discouraged tone. “Why, what else would a red be prowling around our camp for, except looking for a good chance to steal our horses.” “Is that so, Donald?” Billie went on to say; “then I suppose I ought to have banged away, anyhow, and given him a scare; but you see I was that confused I hardly knew what I was about.” “A scare!” echoed Donald. “Why, don’t you know, you innocent, that a cow-puncher would forgive a thief for robbing him of his money, and almost causing his death, quicker than he would for trying to steal his mount?” “Yes,” Adrian went on to add, “they are a good deal like the Arab in that respect. You see, a horse means everything on the prairie, or in the desert; and to take a man’s mount is just the same as threatening his life. Did you manage to get any half-way decent look at him, Donald?” “Well, not so you could mention it,” replied the other, who now had his gun in his hand, and was staring out into the mixture of moonlight and dim shadows as if he still clung to a faint hope that he might find a chance to use the weapon. “But there can be no question about what he was.” “Some stray from the reservation, you think?” Adrian continued; while Billie stood near by, listening eagerly. “Every once in so often some of the hot-blooded young bucks get a notion that things are too tame on the reservation,” Donald started to say with the air of one who knew full well what he was talking about. “And so they start out to take a turn around,” Adrian added, “thinking they ought to copy after their ancestors, and feel wild for a spell. Sometimes they play havoc among the white, being filled with firewater; and then there is trouble enough, with some of the same young bucks getting shot. And as Donald says, an Indian can never resist a chance to steal a horse, when he’s off on a tear like that, free from all the restraint of the old men of his tribe.” “Perhaps he may think to come back, and make another try?” suggested Billie. “Chances are he will do just that same thing; and as he must have one or more friends along, we may have to do some business with our guns before morning,” Donald told him, positively. Billie was duly impressed with the serious nature of the case. Still, he hardly liked the idea of being compelled to shed human blood just because of a horse like his Jupiter. Secretly he hoped that if there did come along any necessity for this sort of thing, his companions would accept some of the burden of responsibility, since they did not seem to care as much as he did. Donald altered his plans more or less, after this plain warning. Now that they actually knew there were thieving Indians around, they could not afford to take any chances of losing their horses.