clouds.

After eating he swung to the bare back of his pony and climbed to the
summit of the butte. His trained eyes searched the plains. A big bunch of
antelope was trailing down to water almost within rifle-shot. But he was
not looking for game.

He sniffed the smoke from the pits where the renegades were roasting
mescal and judged the distance to the Apache camp at close to ten miles.
His gaze swept toward the sunrise horizon and rested upon a cloud of
dust. That probably meant a big herd of cattle crossing to the Pecos
Valley on the Chisum Trail that led to Fort Stanton. The riders were
likely just throwing the beeves from the bed-ground to the trail. The boy
waited to make sure of their line of travel.

Presently he spoke aloud, after the fashion of the plainsman who spends
much time alone in the saddle. "Looks like they'll throw off to-night
close to the 'Pache camp. If they do hell's a-goin' to pop just before
sunup to-morrow. I reckon I'll ride over and warn the outfit."

From a trapper the boy had learned that a band of Mescalero Apaches had
left the reservation three weeks before, crossed into Mexico, gone
plundering down the Pecos, and was now heading back toward the Staked
Plains. Evidently the drover did not know this, since he was moving his
cattle directly toward the Indian camp.

The young fellow let his cowpony pick its way down the steep shale hill
to the draw. He saddled without a waste motion, packed his supplies
deftly, mounted, and was off. In the way he cut across the desert toward
the moving herd was the certainty of the frontiersman. He did not hurry,
but he wasted no time. His horse circled in and out among the sand dunes,
now topped a hill, now followed a wash. Every foot of the devious trail
was the most economical possible.

At the end of nearly an hour's travel he pulled up, threw down his bridle
reins, and studied the ground carefully. He had cut Indian sign. What he
saw would have escaped the notice of a tenderfoot, and if it had been
pointed out to him none but an expert trailer would have understood its
significance. Yet certain facts were printed here on the desert for this
boy as plainly as if they had been stenciled on a guide-post. He knew
that within forty-eight hours a band of about twenty Mescalero bucks had
returned to camp this way from an antelope hunt and that they carried
with them half a dozen pronghorns. It was a safe guess that they were
part of the large camp the