and have your little joke, if it gives you any pleasure, fellows. But I’d do that same thing again, I reckon under similar circumstances. That poor chap was in a bad way, what with his cuts, and being nigh starved. I own up I didn’t just like his looks, but he was in a peck of trouble, and I just didn’t have the heart to desert him till he’d got to feeling better, and said he thought he might get on alone. Never thought to ask his name either; and when I told the boys all about it, and described him as a fellow with a squint in his left eye, why, they just laughed themselves sick over it, and told me I’d been playing nurse to the meanest rascal that ever went unhung.”

“Yes, not a man around the Red Spar has a good word to say about that Tod Harkness,” ventured

Donald, still grinning; “he’s been a cattle rustler and a general all-round shirk, a thief and everything that’s bad. They thought you’d been sold the worst kind. Why, some of the men wanted to know if the sneak hadn’t stolen your pocketbook while you were helping him walk to a place where you meant to camp, that night you got lost.”

“Well, he didn’t, and that’s all there is about it,” said Billie, firmly. “Mebbe Tod Harkness is everything you say; but he was a mighty sick man right then and there. So please forget it. I know I’m soft, and most anybody can impose on me; but I was born that way; and they say the leopard just can’t change his spots. Let that little episode drop. I ain’t sorry one whit, I tell you. Do it again if I ran across a sick man, don’t care if he was the Old Nick himself. So there!”

Donald gave Adrian a nod as if to say “just see how set he is in his ways;” but neither of them continued making any further remark upon the subject which was such a sore one with their stout chum.

Indeed, further conversation was rendered out of the question by Bray, for the pack mule took a sudden notion to give tongue; and when he let out his voice no human tones could prevail against the raucous sounds.

“I think I can see where we’re going to put up

tonight!” Donald called out, some ten minutes afterwards.

At that Billie brightened visibly.

“Oh! that’s the best thing I’ve heard you say for a whole hour, Donald,” he declared, with some signs of excitement. “Then, chances are we’ll be getting busy with supper before a great while. That always pleases me, you know, boys.”

“Yes, and it’s a lucky thing for all of us that the wives of those miners saw fit to make up that hunky-dory pack of supplies, when they heard where we meant to head for, before starting back to Keystone ranch,” Adrian went on to say.

“Oh! I’m always free to admit that I’ve got some appetite along with me,” acknowledged Billie, complacently; for nothing they could ever say along these lines seemed to disturb him in the least.

Before twenty minutes had come and gone they were proceeding to get the tent in position; at least Billie and Adrian set about accomplishing this task, after the horses had been staked out where they could nibble at the grass growing near the spring hole; while Donald arranged a fireplace out of convenient stones, hunter-fashion, it being wider in front for the frying-pan to set there, while the coffee-pot could straddle the narrow section in the rear.

Billie was as happy as a lark; he always acted that way when a bustle in the way of getting ready to eat came along.

“It’s hard for me to believe that, after dreaming about it for years, I’m going to actually set eyes on them queer Zunis in a couple of days,” he started to say; and then turning quickly on Donald, as though he had remembered something he may have intended asking, he went on: “didn’t you say that this was about the time of year when they had all their dances, and carried on such high jinks?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, from what Corse Tibbals told me, if we just happened to hit it about right for all the ceremonies they go through with every year,” Donald replied. “And I reckon, now, that you mean to try and get some snapshots while that native circus is going on, don’t you, Billie?”

“Just what I’m thinking of trying,” admitted the other, naively. “Course I’ve got a heap of pictures of the Zunis and Hopis at home, but that ain’t the same as snapping ’em off all by yourself. I’d rather have a poor picture that I’d taken myself, than the finest any artist could produce. Ain’t that right, Adrian?”

He always appealed to the other when making any statement of this sort; and as usual Adrian quickly backed him up.

“Of course you would, and rightly too, Billie; because that shows you were on deck when the dancing was going on. For a fellow couldn’t very well take a picture of a thing unless he was there, could he?”

“Sure he couldn’t, ’less he piked a copy from another picture,” Billie declared. “And I only hope I’ll get chances to use up a whole string of films, with the girls and their queer head-dresses showing like the Hopi Indians do, and p’raps the old medicine-man all dressed up in his togs adoing a two-step, while he shakes his gourds and rattles, and tinkles his little bells in great style. Oh! I’m cram full of the subject, let me tell you, boys; and I’ll never be happy till I see it all with my very eyes.”

“Well, what are we going to have for supper?” asked Donald, who knew very well that only in this way could the talkative Billie be made to branch off the subject that had begun to be wearisome to the rest of the little party.

The ruse succeeded, too, as it always did; and Billie was quickly at work undoing several of those mysterious packages which the grateful wives of the miners had made up for the trio of saddle pards.

His various exclamations of delight must have early convinced both Adrian and Donald that the fat boy had made numerous satisfactory discoveries. And later on, when that supper was cooked, and they sat around in easy attitudes, consuming the same, they voted that the women of the Red Spar camp were all “trumps” of the first water; because they knew what hungry boys liked most.

“Had we better keep any sort of watch tonight?” asked

Billie, yawning, a couple of hours after they had finished eating; the interval that had elapsed having been occupied with much talk along various interesting lines, during which Billie managed as usual to soak up a great deal of information.

“Well, of course the horses are about as good as a sentry,” admitted Donald, who had trained his pony, Wireless, to snort, and wake him up in case enemies came prowling around; “but all the same we’d better sleep with one eye open. It’s a mighty poor policy to wait till the horse is stolen before you lock the stable door, so my dad always says. And there might be some rustler in this section like, well, Billie’s good friend, Tod, you know; who just couldn’t keep from grabbing our mounts, no matter how hard he tried.”

“Yes,” added Adrian, as though to put a clincher in the assertion made by his chum, “and it’d be no joke for us to be left on foot away off here, hundreds of miles from home. We’ll keep our arms handy, and if any sneak gives us a call, why we can make him sorry he found us at home, that’s what.”

“Hark! listen to Wireless right now, would you?” exclaimed Donald, in a low, tense voice, as he half arose to his feet, quivering with sudden excitement.

Billie was the only one to snatch up a gun, which

he happened to have alongside at that particular moment.

“Look there, will you?” called out Donald; “see him scuttle off into the darkness, of the shadows? An Injun as sure as you live. Oh! if only I had my gun in my hands. Give him a shot, Billie, why don’t you?”

But Billie, although he half raised his Marlin rifle, failed to shoot. Possibly