THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX
them again. "Uh course, they might a picked up fresh horses," he admitted. "I calc'late they needed 'em bad enough, if they ain't been grainin' their own on the trip."
"We didn't see any signs of their horses being turned loose anywhere along," Lite pointed out with a calm confidence that he was right.
Still, they followed the footprints even though they were beginning to admit with perfect frankness their uneasiness. They were swinging gradually toward one of those isolated humps of red rock-ridges which you will find scattered at random through certain parts of the southwest. Perhaps they held some faint hope that what lay on the other side of the ridge would be more promising, just as we all find ourselves building air-castles upon what lies just over the horizon which divides present facts from future possibilities. Besides, these flat-faced ledges frequently formed a sharp dividing line between barren land and fertile, and the hoof prints led that way; so it was with a tacit understanding that they would see what lay beyond the ridge that they rode forward.
Suddenly Applehead, eyeing the rocks specu-
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