party. It seemed impossible that these two travelling alone would have ventured upon such a trip in the face of known Indian hostility. Yet they must have done so, and once again his lips muttered:     

       “Of all the blame fools!”      

       Suddenly he halted, staring about over the prairie, obsessed by a new thought, an aroused suspicion. There had appeared merely the hoof-prints of the one horse alongside of the fleeing wagons when they first turned out from the trail, and that horse had been newly shod. But there were two dead ponies lying back yonder; neither shod, yet both had borne saddles. More than this, they had been spurred, the blood marks still plainly visible, and one of them was branded; he remembered it now, a star and arrow. What could all this portend? Was it possible this attack was no Indian affair after all? Was the disfiguring of bodies, the scalping, merely done to make it appear the act of savages? Driven to investigation by this suspicion, he passed again over the trampled ground, marking this time every separate indentation, every faintest imprint of hoof or foot. There was no impression of a moccasin anywhere; every mark remaining was of booted feet. The inference was sufficiently plain—this had been the deed of white men, not of red; foul murder, and not savage war.     

       The knowledge seemed to seer Keith's brain with fire, and he sprang to his feet, hands clinched and eyes blazing. He could have believed this of Indians, it was according to their nature, their method of warfare; but the cowardliness of it, the atrocity of the act, as perpetrated by men of his own race, instantly aroused within him a desire for vengeance. He wanted to run the fellows down, to discover their identity. Without thinking of personal danger, he ran forward on their trail, which led directly westward, along the line of cottonwoods. These served to conceal his own movements, yet for the moment, burning with passion, he was utterly without caution, without slightest sense of peril. He must know who was guilty of such a crime; he felt capable of killing them even as he would venomous snakes. It was a perfectly plain trail to follow, for the fugitives, apparently convinced of safety, and confident their cowardly deed would be charged to Indian raiders, had made no particular effort at concealment, but had ridden away at a gallop, their horses' hoofs digging deeply into the soft turf. On this retreat they had 

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