"'Five,' he said, 'and the Finisher of the Paths of Our Lives knows how
many more between us and Lasting Water!'

"We did not know yet whether they had seen us, but as we began to move
again cautiously, a fox barked in the scrub that was not a fox. Off to
our left another answered him. So now we were no longer hunters,
but hunted.

"Tse-tse slipped his tunic down to his middle and, unbinding his queue,
wound his long hair about his head to make himself look as much like a
Dine as possible. I could see thought rippling in him as he worked, like
wind on water. We began to snake between the cactus and the black rock
toward the place where the fox had last barked."

"But _toward_ them---" Oliver began.

"They were between us and Lasting Water,"--Moke-icha looked about the
listening circle and the Indians nodded, agreeing. "When a fox barked
again, Tse-tse answered with the impudent folly of a young kit talking
back to his betters. Evidently the man on our left was fooled by it, for
he sheered off, but within a bowshot they began to close on us again.

"We had come to a thicket of mesquite from which a man might slip
unnoticed to the head of the gully, provided no one watched that
particular spot too steadily. There we lay among the thorns and the
shadows were long in the low sun. Close on our right a twig snapped and
I began to gather myself for the spring. The ground sloped a little
before us and gave the advantage. The hand of Tse-tse-yote came along
the back of my neck and rested there. 'If a puma lay up here during the
sun,' he whispered, 'this is the hour he would go forth to his hunting.