“Sleepie-me,” I said to him.

“Me savvy,” he replied and forthwith proceeded to make his bed with me.

Much to my surprise all my comrades raised protestations, which struck me as being singularly selfish considering they would not be inconvenienced in any way.

“Why not?” I asked.  “It’s a cold night.  There’ll be frost if not snow.”

“Shore you’ll get ’em,” said Jim.

“There never was an Indian that didn’t have ’em,” added Jones.

“What?” I questioned.

They made mysterious signs that rather augmented my ignorance as to what I might get from the Indian, but in no wise changed my mind.  When I went to bed I had to crawl over Navvy.  Moze lay at my feet as usual and he growled so deep that I could not but think he, too, resented the addition to my small tent.

“Mista Gay!” came in the Indian’s low voice.

“Well Navvy?” I asked.

“Sleepie—­sleepie?”

“Yes, Navvy, sleepy and tired.  Are you?”

“Me savvy—­mucha sleepie—­mucha—­no bueno.”

I did not wonder at his feeling sleepy, tired and bad.  He did not awaken me in the morning, for when my eyes unclosed the tent was light and he had gone.  I found my companions up and doing.

We had breakfast and got into our saddles by the time the sun, a red ball low down among the pines, began to brighten and turn to gold.  No snow had fallen but a thick frost encrusted the ground.  The hounds, wearing cloth moccasins, which plainly they detested, trotted in front.  Don showed no effects of his great run down the sliding slope after the red lioness; it was one of his remarkable qualities that he recuperated so quickly.  Ranger was a little stiff, and Sounder favored his injured foot.  The others were as usual.

Jones led down the big hollow to which he kept after we had passed the edge of the pines; then marking a herd of deer ahead, he turned his horse up the bank.

We breasted the ridge and jogged toward the cedar forest, which we entered without having seen the hounds show interest in anything.  Under the cedars in the soft yellow dust we crossed lion tracks, many of them, but too old to carry a scent.  Even North Hollow with its regular beaten runway failed to win a murmur from the pack.

“Spread out,” said Jones, “and look for tracks.  I’ll keep the center and hold in the hounds.”

Signalling occasionally to one another we crossed almost the breadth of the cedar forest to its western end, where the open sage flats inclined to the rim.  In one of those flats I came upon a broken sage bush, the grass being thick thereabout.  I discovered no track but dismounted and scrutinized the surroundings carefully.  A heavy body had been dragged across the sage, crushing it.  The ends of broken bushes were green, the leaves showed bruises.

I began to feel like Don when he scented game.  Leading my mustang I slowly proceeded across the open, guided by an occasional down-trodden bush or tuft of grass.  As I neared the cedars again Foxie snorted.  Under the first tree I found a ghastly bunch of red bones, a spread of grayish hairs and a split skull.  The bones, were yet wet; two long doe ears were still warm.  Then I saw big lion tracks in the dust and even a well pressed imprint of a lion’s body where he had rolled or lain.