skins hanging overhead, and perhaps a young coyote crying outside at the end of a tether.
But although he watched Little Dog after that carefully, he began to think he had been mistaken. Even Arizona, when he knew the situation and was also on the alert, relaxed after a few days. Little Dog did his work, and in the leisure time swaggered about the Indian village flirting with the girls. Now and then after dark at their encampment the tom-toms would be held to a fire to tighten the skins, and then the sound of their monotonous beating would announce a dance.
Tom, sauntering there one night, saw Little Dog dancing for the benefit of the southern Indians. He was nude save for a breech clout, and he had painted his body red with stripes of white. He had borrowed a coup stick from one of the old men; the ancient scalps hung to it shook and trembled, and as he danced the Indians squatting about swayed their bodies and chanted some ancient apparently wordless air. . . .
On the night the show loaded Tom had his first real attack of nostalgia.
The wagons, carefully covered with canvas, were placed on the open cars. Up sturdy gangways went the horses, the camels and the elephants, the buffaloes and steers. The old stage coach was carefully loaded, and the covered Conestoga wagon. Cowboys, Indians, girl riders, Arabs, Zouaves, Cossacks and freaks stood by the track, suitcases about them, and waited to be assigned to their traveling quarters for the next eight months. At the "privilege" counter at the end of a car coffee and sandwiches were being served.
He put his suitcase into his berth and then went outside. The lights from the train shone out on the motley gathering, the babel of strange tongues. In their car the elephants were trumpeting uneasily. He moved away from the track and into a field of young wheat.
Suddenly he was homesick; for the faint aromatic odor of the sage brush at dawn, for the mountains in the sunset, for the long trail once more, and the Miller between his knees. Just to go back, a year, two years! To ride in on
