belief that he was fast relapsing to the primitive and growing a fine crop of bristles on his back. On and on, for hours; saddle-galled from the rain, chilled to the bone, hungry, longing for a smoke. On and on, until the horses began to lag, dropping from a trot to a drooping walk, some of them now and then stopping to snip a bunch of grass, the spirit of adventure gone out of them, the long hard drive they lately had been put to telling on them all too soon for the desperate chance of the man who herded them over this trail that led he knew not where.
Simpson knew he would only be crippling his luck to push them on, tired as they were. It might come to the pinch when they'd have to travel for all that was in them. He decided to stop, let them graze and rest, and go on again with daybreak.
Here the landscape was open. Dark as the night pressed down on the prairie, there was a little lightness in the clouds, a little horizon, just about at arm's length, it seemed. Immediately he stopped the march the horses began to graze. He could hear their soft muzzling, the crisp snapping of rain-freshened grass which was both food and drink to the winded beasts.
Simpson rode around and around the little band of horses, keeping them together, listening for the sound of pursuit, unable to get out of his imagination the picture of that shaggy-haired Indian saddling and mounting, dashing away in hot lather to carry the news of this challenged and unanswering marauder passing his door. He had felt the suspicion of that man vibrating in his voice; the Indian had suspected, from the first unanswered hail,
