The Indians, marching steadily onward, had come to the mountain that bounded the plain.  Already a score were across the road that led to the mining-camp of Borealis, and were swarming up the sandy slope to complete the mighty swing of the army, deploying anew to sweep far westward through the farther half of the valley, and so at length backward whence they came.

The tiny chap of a game-bearer, gripping the long, velvet ears of one of the jack-rabbits tied to his horse, felt a horrid new sensation of sliding backward when the pony began to follow the hunters up the hill.  Not only did the animal’s rump seem to sink beneath him as they took the slope, but perspiration had made it amazingly smooth and insecure.

The big fat rabbits rolled against the desperate little man in a ponderous heap.  The feet of one fell plump in his face, and seemed to kick, with the motion of the horse.  Then a buckskin thong abruptly snapped in twain, somewhere deep in the bundle, and instantly the ears to which the tiny man was clinging, together with the head and body of that particular rabbit, and those of several others as well, parted company with the pony.  Gracefully they slid across the tail of the much-relieved creature, and, pushing the tiny rider from his seat, they landed with him plump upon the earth, and were left behind.

Unhurt, but nearly buried by the four or five rabbits thus pulled from the load by his sudden descent from his perch, the dazed little fellow sat up in the sand and solemnly noted the rapid departure of the Indian army—­pony, companion, and all.

Not only had his fall been unobserved by the marching braves, but the boy with whom he had just been riding was blissfully unaware of the fact that something behind had dismounted.  The whole vast line of Piute braves pressed swiftly on.  The shots boomed and clattered, as the hill-sides were startled by the echoes.  Red, yellow, indigo—­the blankets and trappings were momentarily growing less and less distinct.

More distant became the firing.  Onward, ever onward, swung the great, long column of the hunters.  Dully, then even faintly, came the noise of the guns.

At last the firing could be heard no more.  The two hundred warriors, the ponies, the boys that rode—­all were gone.  Even the rabbits, that an hour before had scampered here and there in the brush with their furry feet, would never again go pattering through the sand.  The sun shone warmly down.  The great world of valley and mountains, gray, severe, unpeopled, was profoundly still, in that wonderful way of the dying year, when even the crickets and locusts have ceased to sing.

Clinging in silence to the long, soft ears of his motionless bunny, the timid little game-bearer sat there alone, big-eyed and dumb with wonder and childish alarm.  He could see not far, unless it might be up the hill, for the sage-brush grew above his head and circumscribed his view.  Miles and miles away, however, the mountains, in majesty of rock and snow, were sharply lifting upward into blue so deep and cloudless that its intimate proximity to the infinite was impressively manifest.  The day was sweet of the ripeness of the year, and virginal as all that mighty land itself.