HERBERT noticed, as he went forward, that the fire was sinking so low as to show that it had not been looked after for some time. Backed against a bowlder near the spring, it was well protected from the wind, but had been fanned into a blaze that must have diffused a good deal of warmth in all directions.

The first mild surprise came to the youth when, on coming close to the smouldering camp fire, he failed to see Nick. He expected to find him resting comfortably near at hand, swathed in one of the thick blankets capable of shutting out every kind of cold except that of a norther, which will force its way through almost anything.

Stepping forward into the light of the fire, Herbert looked inquiringly around in the gloom, and called the name of his friend,[142] repeating it several times with increasing loudness, but with no more result than in the first instance. Then the youth started out to investigate for himself.

The discovery that followed was startling. Not only Nick Ribsam, but his horse, the two pack animals and the pony belonging to Herbert, were missing! They were nowhere in the neighborhood.

The youth was knocked almost breathless. He came back beside the smouldering fire and tried to reason connectedly over the situation.

“This is ahead of everything yet,” he said to himself; “it begins to look as if all actions are tinged with mystery. Nick and I couldn’t understand why Strubell and Lattin should act as they did this afternoon, but I am not half as much mystified over that as over this. Nick and all the horses gone. What can it mean?”

“All that is left me, besides my weapon,” he added with grim feeling, “is my field glass, but I don’t need that to see what a fix I’m in, and yet I am more worried about Nick than myself——”

[143]

He thought he heard a footfall from the direction of the fork of the trails. Grasping his Winchester he moved silently back in the gloom, where he could not be seen by any lurking Indian or white enemy.

“It is Nick returning,” was his thought, as he recognized the hoofs of an animal.

The next minute his own pony, saddled and bridled, as when he last saw him, walked forward in the firelight and uttered a faint whinny of pleasure at sight of his master.

“Heaven bless you!” was the grateful exclamation of Herbert as he met him and patted his neck; “I feared you were gone for good; but, Jill, how I wish you could talk that you might tell me all about Nick and the other horses.”

To say the least, the pony had behaved himself in a singular fashion. I have told how he was driven along by the norther until he passed beyond the fork in the trails, Nick Ribsam catching the faint footfalls as he applied his ear to the ground, which told him the beast was receding.

No doubt there crept into the brain of this[144] sagacious animal a conviction that he was not doing precisely the right thing in wandering away from the spot where his master had left him, and where, of course, he expected to find him on his return.

In addition, the norther, that had brought about this breach of confidence, subsided to that extent that it was no hardship to face it. This subsidence, however, did not reach a degree that suited Jill until he had drifted off for a considerable while. Then he began edging backward, and, possibly because he divined the intentions of Herbert, he followed the main trail until he joined his master at the camp fire.

Among the many extraordinary incidents which attended the tour of Nick and Herbert through the Southwest, probably there was none more remarkable than the action of the pony Jill and the consequences flowing therefrom. He drifted away from the scene of several singular events and remained absent until they were finished. Then he came back, and had he been a little later or earlier, the whole face of history might have been changed—that[145] is, so far as it related to the youths I have named.

Having regained his pony, Herbert was as much perplexed as ever. It was an invaluable piece of good fortune thus securing his horse, for a person on the plains without a good steed is in the situation of the sailor without boat or ship on the ocean; but he was totally at a loss how to proceed.

The most obvious course was to stay where he was until morning, or until some kind of knowledge came to him. The Texans had promised to join him and Nick by daylight and probably before, and it would not require them long to............