Her heart beat hard with exertion and anxiety, and when she reached the level she hurried right along upon the trail of the braves. It was not many minutes before she could see them, and a sort of mist came before her eyes. They were all sitting upon the grass around something, and she could hear her father's voice chanting. It was a curious kind of song of triumph, belonging especially to a case of large grisly bear slaying, but Na-tee-kah could not hear it clearly at first, and it might have been a funeral song for all the music there was in it. All out of breath she toiled on, as near as an Indian girl might come to a party of warriors, and then she understood it like a flash. Red or white, she was only a girl, and she sat down on the grass and began to cry. The Big Tongue had risen as she came near, and he was polite enough to say to her, "Squaw not cry. Boy all right. We have killed a bear. Ugh!" CHAPTER XIII GREAT SCOUTING The quadrupeds of the mining expedition showed many signs of the hard time they had been having, and it was needful to get out from among the rocks quickly. It was yet quite shadowy in the deep canon when the wagons were set in motion, but not a great deal of "road mending" was called for from that point onward. Early in the day they came out upon the level, and before noon the horses and mules were picking the rich grass around the ancient ruins. It was a grand time, and Sile had a dim idea that he only drew his breath now and then, the great, long ones came so frequently. He had felt one kind of awe in the canon and in looking at the mountain peaks. Now he felt quite another kind of awe in looking at the rude mason-work of those houses. "Father," he asked, "do you s'pose they were people anything like us?" "They built three-story houses. No Indians ever did that." "Is there nothing at all about them in history?" "Yes, here are the ruins. Here are little books like this." He handed Sile what looked for all the world like a broken piece of an old pot, and Sile said so. "That's it. If it is one, it shows that they understood making pottery. Nobody has ever found anything to prove that they were miners, and all the stones of these houses are only broken. None of them are cut or trimmed." It was a wonder of wonders to stand there and talk about a lost and vanished people, but Yellow Pine was thinking of a people who had vanished without being lost. They were the Indians whose camp-grounds he had moved into and out of, and he had an idea that they might be found again at any hour. He advised the judge not to move on again until some exploring and scouting should have been done. Meantime the "critters," as he called them, did their feeding under a strong guard and close watching. "Sile," he said, "as soon as your horse has had a good feed, you and I will ride a circuit and see what we can find."