companions, as I rode along. If Pend d' Oreille hadn't been the nearest
place, I'd have turned back to Walsh and made that bunch of exhumers
come back after me, if it were absolutely necessary that I should pilot
them to the graves. Personally, I thought those two old plainsmen
wouldn't thank Major Lessard or any one else for disturbing their last,
long sleep; the wide, unpeopled prairies had always been their choice in
life, and I felt that they would rather be laid away in some quiet
coulée, than in any conventional "city of the dead" with prim headstones
and iron fences to shut them in. A Western man likes lots of room; dead
or alive, it irks him to be crowded.

I fully expected to find the four waiting for me at Pend d' Oreille, and
I was prepared to hear a good deal of chaffing about getting lost. What
of my waiting on the ridge that afternoon, and bearing more or less away
from the proper direction at night, I did not reach the post till noon;
and I was a bit puzzled to find only the men who were on duty there. I
was digesting this along with the remains of the troopers' dinner, when
Goodell and his satellites popped over the hill that looked down on Pend
d' Oreille, and, a few minutes later, came riding nonchalantly up to the
mess-house.

"Well, you beat us in," Goodell greeted airily. "Did you find a short
cut?"

"Sure thing," I responded, with what irony I could command.

"Where the deuce _did_ you go, anyway, after you stopped in that
creek-bottom?" he asked, eying me with much curiosity. "We nearly played
our horses out galloping around looking for you--after we'd gone a mile
or so, and you didn't catch up."