s were drawn taut.

"Which way, Frank?" asked the Kentucky lad, eagerly, as he threw back
his shock of black hair, and waited to see where the finger of his
companion would point.

"Whatever it was disappeared behind that spur of the low foot hills
yonder. I just caught a peep of the last of it. Here, Bob, take the
glasses, and wait to see if it shows up again on the other side of the
rise," and Frank thrust the binoculars into the hand of his chum.

"Think it could have been a prowling coyote; or perhaps a bunch of
antelope feeding on the sweet grass around some spring hole, as you
were telling me they do?" asked Bob, holding himself in readiness.

"Well," returned Frank, quickly, "the sun was in my eyes some, you see,
and so I wouldn't like to be too sure; but somehow, Bob, I just have a
notion that it was a horse."

"With a rider on it, of course!" exclaimed the other lad, as he raised
the glasses to his eyes, training them on the further end of the squat
elevation that stood up in the midst of the sage level like a great
hump on a camel.

"There, looks like I was right, Bob!" ejaculated Frank, a minute or so
later, as something came out from behind the low hill, moving steadily
onward.

"Indians! as sure as anything!" fell from the lips of the one who held
the field glasses to his eyes.

"One--two--three--a heap of the reds in that bunch, I reckon," muttered
Frank, watching with his naked eye; although the distance, separating
them from the spot where the figures were passing steadily into view,
was considerable.

"Say, these glasses are jim-dandy ones, all right!" remarked Bob,
presently, as he turned to offer them to his chum, who immediately
clapped them to his own eyes.

"Huh!" grunted Frank a moment later, "squaws along; each cayuse
dragging poles on which they heap their lodges, blankets and such;
reckon there's no war party about that, Bob."

"I should think not, if what you've told me about the Indians is a
fact, Frank. But look here, what d'ye suppose they're doing so far
away from their reservation?" and Bob gripped his quirt, which hung, as
usual, from his wrist, in cowboy fashion; and with a nervous slash cut
off the tops of the rattlesnake weed within reach.

"That's where you've got me, Bob," replied the one who had been brought
up on a ranch, and who was supposed to know considerable about the life
of the plains; "unless they've just got desperate for a good old hunt,
and broke loos