Page:B M Bower - Heritage of the Sioux.djvu/231

"NOW, DANG IT, RIDE!" formed to represent the six whom the Happy Family had been following. These divided and made off in different directions, leaving a plain trail behind them to lure the white men into the traps which would be prepared for them farther on.

When dawn made it possible to do so effectively, the squaws began to whip out the trail of the six renegade Indians, and the chance footprints of those who had gone ahead to leave the false trail for the white men to follow. Very painstakingly the squaws worked, and the young ones who could be trusted. Brushing the sand smoothly across a hoofprint here, and another one there; walking backward, their bodies bent, their sharp eyes scanning every little depression, every faint trace of the passing of their tribesmen; brushing, replacing pebbles kicked aside by a hoof, wiping out completely that trail which the Happy Family had followed with such persistence, the squaws did their part, while their men went on to prepare the trap. Years ago—yet not so many after all—the mothers of these squaws, and their grandmothers, had walked backward and stooped with little 219