n foot and carried carbines. Seen
anything of such a party?"

The squatter brought his hands together with a loud slap before he
replied.

"I jest knowed them fellows wasn't what they allowed they was," said he.
"In course I seed 'em, an' they told me they was a-lookin' for deserters
themselves. They went off that way, toward the old Brazos trail," added
the squatter, pointing in a direction which lay exactly at right angles
with the course Bob had been pursuing.

"Did they?" exclaimed the corporal with a great show of eagerness.
"Thank you for the information. We will go that way too as soon as we
have eaten dinner. How long ago did they pass this way?"

"Jest at daylight."

"That's another lie," said Bob to himself. "They didn't desert until
after midnight, and they couldn't have travelled between fifteen and
twenty miles in less than five hours on foot. An infantryman might do
it on a pinch, but a trooper couldn't."

"You'll have to hurry up if you want to ketch 'em," continued the
squatter, who seemed to grow nervous when he saw how deliberately the
troopers went about their preparations for dinner. "They was a-lumberin'
along right peart."

"Oh, there's no need that we should throw ourselves into a
perspiration," replied Bob indifferently. "We don't care if we don't
find them for a week. You see, when we are out on an expedition like
this we are not obliged to drill, and our pay goes on just the same. If
you have anything good to eat, trot it out; we're wealthy."

But the squatter protested that he had nothing in his cabin except bacon
and crackers, and his supply of these necessary articles was so small
that he could not possibly spare any of it. He said so much on this
point that the troopers would have been dull indeed if they had not
suspected something.

"He wants to get us away from here, doesn't he?" said Carey as soon as
he had a chance to speak to Bob. "He thinks that if he provides us with
a good dinner we will spend a long time in eating it. Now, corporal, I
will bet you anything you please that--"

"I know," interrupted Bob, "and I want you to take a look into the
matter at once. This is my plan."

Here Bob whispered some rapid instructions to the trooper, who winked
first one eye and then the other to show that he understood them.
Pulling his pipe from his pocket, he proceeded to fill it with tobacco,
while Bob walked up to the squatter, and, taking him confidentially by
the arm, said, a