The Indians kept very quiet all day, sitting in the shadow of their lodges, smoking and talking. They did not even build any fires, but contented themselves with their dried buffalo meat and the bread which Joe had brought, for fear of making the slightest disturbance, and thus preventing the wild horses from returning to their usual nightly resting-place. Every once in a while, either White Wolf himself or some of the other warriors would venture out of the timber and gaze long and anxiously over the vast prairie, in hope of seeing something of the bunch, which they knew was grazing somewhere not many miles away. Once the chief thought he saw in the distance, moving objects which he took for horses, for he was noted far beyond any other member of his band for his keen sight. He was right in his conjectures, for before half an hour had passed from the time he had first riveted his attention, the bunch--for such it was--had swung around, broadside to, and, approaching nearer the timber, could be counted. There were over forty animals, led by a magnificent black horse which the chief said he would try to capture. It was a beautiful sight, and Joe stood transfixed as they kicked up their heels, and raced after one another like a group of school children, little suspecting that, before the sun went down the next evening, many of them would be ridden by the Indians who were now gazing at them so covetously. Night seemed to be very slow in coming to the band of Pawnees, who smoked and smoked incessantly, to pass the long hours before darkness would invite the herd to seek its bed-ground. At last after dark, by the light of the crescent moon, they saw the animals, led by the coal-black stallion, cautiously walk into the timber about a mile from the Pawnee camp. When the neighing and pawing had ceased, the hunters wrapped themselves in their blankets and buffalo robes, intending to be up before it was light, and surprise the herd before it was ready to go out to graze. The ponies were securely picketed, saddles, girths, and bridles examined, buffalo-hair lariats overhauled, and all made ready for an early start on the hard day's ride. Long before the sun had showed the faintest indication of his coming; while the stars were still shining brilliantly, the Indians and Joe were up, and hastily breakfasting, or taking their matutinal smoke. They then mounted their ponies, and stealthily walked the animals in the direction of the slumbering bunch of wild horses. When they had arrived within a few hundred yards of the place where the handsome creatures were still unconsciously resting, one of the Indians and Joe, who was as good as the best man among them, dismounted and crawled forward in the brush to reconnoitre. They returned in a few moments and reported to White Wolf that all was quiet, not a single horse's ear had they seen pricked up, so the animals had not as yet been warned of danger.