Scotty looked around from his jouncing pony, but could spy out absolutely nothing. He knew that the hogans, or Navaho houses, appeared from the outside as mere dirt mounds, and were usually built near mesas or rocky ridges where it would take a sharp eye to pick them out. They were never built near water, the Navahos preferring to carry it from some distant source. It was all a part of their stealthy raiding and marauding tendencies; a war-like folk that had invaded the pueblo country several centuries ago,--whose very villages were a sort of ambush for the unwary. But Ruler still kept on, streaking across the desert in an unhesitating run. His occasional bay showed that the pony’s trail was quite recent, enough so that the heat of the desert day had not evaporated all scent from it. Then far to the east showed up a broken ridge of rock with quite a thicket around it, rising like a green hummock out of the ocean of gray sage. In the midst of it Scotty’s young eyes made out a tiny patch of color. “Mark!” he called. “Indians! Navaho!--See it, sir?” he asked, turning to point out the patch to the Colonel. “Looks like a blanket or something, over yonder in that grove of mesquite.” Ruler redoubled his bays, and the gray sand spurted from his heels. He headed straight for the grove. A tiny wisp of smoke rose from one side of it, curling lazily away in the desert breeze. The patch of color had now developed into a square shape, striped and crisscrossed with a pattern of some sort, and under the shade of a mesquite the forked uprights and cross poles of the blanket loom gradually developed and became distinct to the eye. Then, with the suddenness of realization, they all became aware of the dirt mound of the hogan, looming up before them. A gray blanket hanging in its door had been pushed aside, and a young Indian girl had stepped out with a spindle of wool yarn in one hand and a pottery jar in the other. The black square that she opened up immediately gave the hogan shape around it. It was large and conical in shape, and cunningly planted with aloes, yucca and even sage, so that it looked about the same as the desert soil around it. The girl peered at them, and then ran around to one side, where the smoke came from under the shade of a juniper. A young buck appeared, the red bandanna around his forehead the most conspicuous thing about him at that distance. Big John shouted to the dogs and reined up his pony, for a hound on a hot scent is quite likely to attack any human that gets in his way. Ruler turned and circled back inquiringly, for he was well trained to voice, while a pistol shot across the sand halted the pups, and they came around to follow in his lead. Scotty and the Colonel closed up, and the party of whites halted, while Big John dismounted and slipped a leash on Ruler.