over a wide circle, even scanning the stretch of gravel under the river
bank, before he could fully satisfy himself there were no others in the
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