Down the draw--where there were no horses feeding--an Indian in dirty overalls and gingham shirt and moccasins, and with his hair bobbed to his collar, stood up and peered toward the vague figures grouped in the fire-glow. He lifted his hand and moved it slightly, so that the bell he was holding tinkled exactly as it had done when it was strapped around Johnny's neck; Johnny, who was at that moment trailing disgustedly over a ridge half a mile away with his mates, driven by two horsemen who rode very carefully, so as to make no noise. The figures settled back reassured, and the Indian grinned sourly and tinkled the little bell painstakingly, with the matchless patience of the Indian. It was an hour before he dimly saw Pink get up from the dying coals and mount his horse. Then, still tinkling the bell as a feeding horse would have made it ring, he moved slowly down the draw; slowly, so that Pink did not at first suspect that the bell sounded farther off than before; slowly yet surely, leading Pink farther and farther in the hope of speedily overtaking the horses that he cursed for their wandering. Pink wondered, after a little, what was the matter with the darned things, wandering off like that by themselves, and with no possible excuse that he could see. For some time he was not uneasy; he expected to overtake them within the next five or ten minutes. They would stop to feed, surely, or to look back and listen--in a strange country like this it was against horse-nature that they should wander far away at night unless they were thirsty and on the scent of water. These horses had drunk their fill at the little pool below the spring. They should be feeding now, or they should lie down and sleep, or stand up and sleep--anything but travel like this, deliberately away from camp. Pink tried loping, but the ground was too treacherous and his horse too leg-weary to handle its feet properly in the dark. It stumbled several times, so he pulled down again to a fast walk. For a few minutes he did not hear the bell at all, and when he did it was not where he had expected to hear it, but away off to one side. So he had gained nothing save in anger and uneasiness. There was no use going back to camp and rousing the boys, for he was now a mile or so away; and they would be afoot, since their custom was to keep but one horse saddled. When he went in to call the next guard he would be expected to bring that man's horse back with him, and would turn his own loose before he went to sleep. Certainly there was nothing to be gained by rousing the camp. He did not suspect the trick being played upon him, though he did wonder if someone was leading the horses away. Still, in that case whoever did it would surely have sense enough to muffle the bell. Besides, it sounded exactly like a horse feeding and moving away at random--which, to those familiar with the sound, can never be mistaken for the tinkle of an animal traveling steadily to some definite point.