62
OLD HICKS THE GUIDE.
off across them with a speed that seems to annihilate space.   They are easily shot, though.
The doctor killed one before night, vowing that he suspected it was made of India rubber and whalebone, from its springiness, and he wanted to put the thing to proof with his teeth; nor did he seem to have altered his first opinion much after the experiment.
We camped at a mud-hole ; for it is ridiculous to call the stuff it held water. We had, fortunately, some left of the morning supply in the water-gourds. The poor horses seemed to think it a hard dose to swallow.
January 23.—We started very early. Hicks says we may look out for Indians. He showed me a trail, which I should have taken for that of a drove of mustangs, but which, he said, was of a party of Indians. I was curious to know how he could tell; for Indians ride mustangs, and they are not shod.
He said that mustangs seldom go out of a walk when traveling, and follow the stud, or leader, nearly in single file; but Indians move more irregularly, and abreast, making a wider trail, and their horses' feet sinking deeper from the weight they carry. Another sign is, that the dung dropped by the horses is harder; another, if you follow the trail for a mile or so with a hunter's eyes, you will be sure to find some little scrap of meat, or some trifling thing they have dropped, which makes the matter sure.
He picked up a feather which seemed to have come from the end of an arrow, and, on the strength of it, forthwith pronounced them to have been Snake Indians. On examining the dung, he said they had passed yesterday morning.
This was all as mysterious as reading Sanscrit to the most of us; though I knew the old fellow's sagacity in such matters was unerring. I forthwith laid my commands upon the doctor to be a little less erratic ; for our trip had been so uniformly fortunate and pleasant, as yet, that it was time, in the " course of human"—at least prairie—" events/' that we should meet with something un-