Page:B M Bower - Heritage of the Sioux.djvu/233

"NOW, DANG IT, RIDE!" to take you back into the untamed days of the pioneers.

Luck and the Happy Family—so well had the squaws done their work—passed unsuspectingly over the wiped-out trail, circled at fault on the far side of the rocky gulch for an hour or so and then found the false trail just as the Indian decoys had intended that they should do. And from a farther flat topped ridge a group of Indians with Dutch hair-cuts and Stetson hats and moccasins (the two hall-marks of two races) watched them take the false trail, and looked at one another and grinned sourly.

The false trail forked, showing that the six had separated into two parties of three riders, each aiming to pass—so the hoofprints would lead one to believe—around the two ends of a lone hill that sat squarely down on the mesa like a stone treasure chest dropped there by the gods when the world was young.

The Happy Family drew rein and eyed the parting of the ways dubiously.

"Wonder what they did that for?" Andy Green 221