Presently I looked at the ground a few steps before me, and I thought I saw where something had stepped.  It was hard for me to make up my mind to walk to this place, but at length I did so.  When I got there I saw where a horse had stood—­a fresh horse track.  Near it were two tracks made by a man, an enemy.  I could see where he had stood, with one foot advanced before the other.  When I saw these tracks I knew what had happened; an enemy had stood there looking over at us, and when he saw me with my gun start toward the top of the hill he had gone away.  Standing where he had stood, I looked back toward our horses; I could hardly see their backs, but a man taller than I could have seen more of them, and the heads of the two men.  I turned to follow the tracks a little way, and as I walked, it did not seem to me that my bones were stiff enough to support my body; I seemed to sway from side to side, and felt as if I should fall down.  I was frightened.

I saw where the man had led his horse a little way back from the hill, and then had jumped on it and ridden off as hard as he could gallop.  A little further on was the place where another horse had stood; it, too, had turned and gone off fast; its rider had not dismounted.  One of the men had said to the other:  “You wait here, and I will go up and take a look.  If these people sleep here we will attack them when it is dark, and kill them and take their horses.”

I cannot tell you how much I wanted to run back to my friend and tell him what I had seen; but I had courage enough to walk.  I felt angry at myself for being so frightened.  I said to myself:  “Come, you are a man; you belong to brave people; your uncle and your father did not fear things that they could not see.  Be brave.  Be strong.”  It was no use for me to say this; I was so frightened I could hardly control myself.  I felt as if I must run away.

I walked until I was close to my friend.  He was cooking meat, and was still singing to himself.  When I was pretty near to him I said, “Friend, put the saddle on your horse, and I will saddle mine, and we will go away from here.”  He turned and looked at me, and in a moment he had dropped the meat that he was cooking, and was saddling up.  He told me the next day that my face had changed so that he hardly knew me; my face was like that of one dead.  I said to him, “Do you go ahead, and go fast, but do not gallop.”  He started off without a word, and I followed him.  It was now growing dark, but you could still see a long way.  As I rode I seemed to have three heads, I looked in so many different directions.  We traveled fast.  My courage did not come back to me.  I was still miserable.

About the middle of the night I said to my friend, “Let us stop here, so that the horses may eat.”  We stopped and took off our saddles, and held the ropes of our horses in our hands, and lay down on the ground together, looking back over the trail that we had come.  My friend’s horse was eating, but mine stood with his head high, and his ears pricked, and kept looking back toward where we had come from.  Every now and then he would snort, as if frightened.  Sometimes he would take a bite or two of grass, and then would again stand with his head up, looking and snorting.  This made me more afraid than ever; and now my friend was as badly frightened as I.