disgusted with life. Step-and-a-Half's vituperations could be
heard above the clatter of pots and pans as he made ready for
the journey.

That night's ride up the pass through the narrow range of
high-peaked hills to the Tomahawk's farthest range on Big
Creek was a tedious affair to Buddy. A man had been sent on a
fast horse to warn the nearest neighbor, who in turn would
warn the next,--until no settler would be left in ignorance
of his danger. Ezra was already on the trail to Laramie, with
mother and Dulcie and the cats and a slat box full of
chickens, and a young sow with little pigs.

Buddy, whose word no one had questioned, who might pardonably
have considered himself a hero, was concerned chiefly with
his mother's flower garden which he had helped to plant and
had watered more or less faithfully with creek water carried
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