arried in buckets. He was afraid the
Indians would step on the poppies and the phlox, and trample down the
four o'clocks which were just beginning to branch out and look nice and
bushy, and to blossom. The scent of the four o'clocks had been in his
nostrils when he came out at dusk with his fur overcoat which mother had
told him must not be left behind. Buddy himself merely liked flowers:
but mother talked to them and kissed them just for love, and pitied them
if Buddy forgot and let them go thirsty. He would have stayed to fight
for mother's flower garden, if it would have done any good.

He was thinking sleepily that next year he would plant flowers in boxes
that could be carried to the cave if the Indians broke out again, when
Tex Farley poked him in the ribs and told him to wake up or he'd fall
off his horse. It was a weary climb to the top of the range that divided
the valley of Big Creek from the North Platte, and a wearier climb down.
Twice Buddy caught himself on the verge of toppling out of the saddle.
For after all he was only a thirteen-year Old boy, growing like any
other healthy young animal. He had been riding hard that day and half of
the preceding night when he had raced back from the Reservation to
give warning of the impending outbreak. He needed sleep, and nature was
determined that he should have it.

CHAPTER FIVE: BUDDY RUNS TRUE TO TYPE

One never could predict with any certainty how long Indians would dance
before they actually took the trail of murder and pillage. So much
depended upon the Medicine, so much on signs and portents. It was even
possible that they might, for some mysterious reason unknown to their
white neighbors, decide at the last moment to bide their time. The
Tomahawk outfit worked from dawn until dark, and combed the foothills
of the Snowies hurriedly, riding into the most frequented, grassy basins
and wide canyons where the grass was lush and sweet and the mountain
streams rushed noisily over rocks. As fast as the cattle were gathered
they were pushed hastily toward the Platte, And though the men rode
warily with rifles as handy as their ropes, they rode in peace.

Buddy, proud of his job, counting himself as good a man as any of them,
became a small riding demon after rebellious saddle horses, herding them
away from thick undergrowth that might, for all he knew, hold Indians
waiting a chance to scalp him, driving the REMUDA close to the cabins
when night fell, because n