The summits of the swells were bare, the streams shrunk in
sandy channels. It was like a face from which youth is withdrawing.
The Indian encampment lay in a hollow, the small wattled huts gathered
on both sides of a runlet that oozed from the slope and slipped between
a line of stepping stones. The hollow was deep for the level country,
the grassed sides sweeping abruptly to the higher reaches above. They
walked through it, examining the neatly made huts and speculating on
the length of time the Indians had left. David remembered that the day
before, the trail had been crossed by the tracks of a village in
transit, long lines graven in the dust by the dragging poles of the
_travaux_. He felt uneasy. The Indians might not be far and they
themselves were at least a mile from the camp, and but one of them
armed. The others laughed and Susan brought the blood into his face by
asking him if he was afraid.
He turned from her, frankly angry and then stood rigid with fixed
glance. On the summit of the opposite slope, black against the yellow
west, were a group of mounted figures. They were massed together in a
solid darkness, but the outlines of the heads were clear, heads across
which bristled an upright crest of hair like the comb of a rooster.
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