to be "out of sorts" for days, from having his prairie-craft doubted by
some one whom he deemed less experienced than himself; and, indeed,
there were few of his kind whose knowledge of the wilderness was at all
comparable with his. He was not always in the right; but generally
where _his_ instincts failed, it wat, idle to try further. In the
present case, the man who had thoughtlessly doubted him was one of the
"greenest" of the party, but this only aggravated the matter in the eyes
of Old Rube.

"Sich a fellur as you," he said, giving a last dig to the offending
ranger--"sich a fellur as you oughter keep yur head shet up: thet ur
tongue o' yourn s' allers a gwine like a bull's tail in fly-time.
Wagh!"

As the man made no reply to this rather rough remonstrance, Rube's
"dander" soon smoothed down; and once more becoming cool, he turned his
attention to the business of the hour.

That there had been Indians upon the ground was now an ascertained fact;
the peculiar shoeing of the horses rendered it indubitable. Mexican
horses, if shod at all, would have had a shoeing of iron--at least on
their fore-feet. Wild mustangs would have had the hoof naked; while the
tracks of Texan or American horses could have been easily told, either
from the peculiar shoeing or the superior size of their hoofs. The
horses that had galloped over that ground were neither wild, Texan, nor
Mexican: Indian they must have been.

Although the one track first examined might have settled the point, it
was a fact of too much importance to be left under the slightest doubt.
The presence of Indians meant the presence of enemies--foes dire and
deadly--and it was with something more than feelings of mere curiosity
that my companions scrutinised the sign.

The ashes were blown out from several others, and these carefully
studied. Additional facts were brought to light by those Champollions
of the prairie--Rube and Garey. Whoever rode the horses, had been going
in a gallop. They had not ridden long in one course; but here and there
had turned and struck off in new directions. There had been a score or
so of them. No two had been galloping together; their tracks converged
or crossed one another--now zigzagging, now running in right lines, or
sweeping in curves and circles over the plain.

All this knowledge the trackers had obtained in less than ten minutes--
simply by riding around and examining the tracks. Not to disturb them
in their di