“That can’t be dust,” he soliloquized.  “Looks blue to me.”

He studied the hazy bluish cloud for some time, but it was so many miles away that he could not be certain whether it was smoke or not, so he decided to ride over and make sure.  None of the Naabs was in camp, and there was no telling when they would return, so he set off alone.  He expected to get back before dark, but it was of little consequence whether he did or not, for he had his blanket under the saddle, and grain for Silvermane and food for himself in the saddle-bags.

Long before Silvermane’s easy trot had covered half the distance Hare recognized the cloud that had made him curious.  It was smoke.  He thought that range-riders were camping at the springs, and he meant to see what they were about.  After three hours of brisk travel he reached the top of a low rolling knoll that hid Seeping Springs.  He remembered the springs were up under the red wall, and that the pool where the cattle drank was lower down in a clump of cedars.  He saw smoke rising in a column from the cedars, and he heard the lowing of cattle.

“Something wrong here,” he muttered.  Following the trail, he rode through the cedars to come upon the dry hole where the pool had once been.  There was no water in the flume.  The bellowing cattle came from beyond the cedars, down the other side of the ridge.  He was not long in reaching the open, and then one glance made all clear.

A new pool, large as a little lake, shone in the sunlight, and round it a jostling horned mass of cattle were pressing against a high corral.  The flume that fed water to the pool was fenced all the way up to the springs.

Jack slowly rode down the ridge with eyes roving under the cedars and up to the wall.  Not a man was in sight.

When he got to the fire he saw that it was not many hours old and was surrounded by fresh boot and horse tracks in the dust.  Piles of slender pine logs, trimmed flat on one side, were proof of somebody’s intention to erect a cabin.  In a rage he flung himself from the saddle.  It was not many moments’ work for him to push part of the fire under the fence, and part of it against the pile of logs.  The pitch-pines went off like rockets, driving the thirsty cattle back.

“I’m going to trail those horse-tracks,” said Hare.

He tore down a portion of the fence enclosing the flume, and gave Silvermane a drink, then put him to a fast trot on the white trail.  The tracks he had resolved to follow were clean-cut.  A few inches of snow had fallen in the valley, and melting, had softened the hard ground.  Silvermane kept to his gait with the tirelessness of a desert horse.  August Naab had once said fifty miles a day would be play for the stallion.  All the afternoon Hare watched the trail speed toward him and the end of Coconina rise above him.  Long before sunset he had reached the slope of the mountain and had begun the ascent.  Half way up he came to the snow and counted the tracks of three horses.  At twilight he rode into the glade where August Naab had waited for his Navajo friends.  There, in a sheltered nook among the rocks, he unsaddled Silvermane, covered and fed him, built a fire, ate sparingly of his meat and bread, and rolling up in his blanket, was soon asleep.