The figures settled back reassured, and the Indian grinned sourly and tinkled
the little bell painstakingly, with the matchless patience of the Indian. It
was an hour before he dimly saw Pink get up from the dying coals and mount his
horse. Then, still tinkling the bell as a feeding horse would have made it
ring, he moved slowly down the draw; slowly, so that Pink did not at first
suspect that the bell sounded farther off than before; slowly yet surely,
leading Pink farther and farther in the hope of speedily overtaking the horses
that he cursed for their wandering.
Pink wondered, after a little, what was the matter with the darned things,
wandering off like that by themselves, and with no possible excuse that he
could see. For some time he was not uneasy; he expected to overtake them
within the next five or ten minutes. They would stop to feed, surely, or to
look back and listen--in a strange country like this it was against
horse-nature that they should wander far away at night unless they were
thirsty and on the scent of water. These horses had drunk their fill at the
little pool below the spring. They should be feeding now, or they should lie
down and sleep, or stand up and sleep--anything but travel like this,
deliberately away from camp.
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