"These mild men like Arenberg are terrible when they are stirred up, Phil. 'Still waters run deep,' which sounds to me rather Irish, because if they are still they don't run at all. But it's good all the same, and, between you and me, Phil, I'd give a lot if we were on the other side of this river, which has no name in the geographies, which rises I don't know where, which empties into I don't know what, and which belongs to I don't know whom. But, be that as it may, lay on, Macduff, and I won't be the first to cry 'Hold, enough!'"

The train took another curve to the northward, approaching the ford, of which the old scouts told. The swells dipped down, indicating a point at which the banks of the river were low, but they could still see the double line of trees lining either shore, and the masses of bushes and weeds that extended along the stream. But nothing stirred them. No wind blew. The boughs of the cottonwoods, live oaks, and willows hung lifeless under the somber sky. There was still no sign of human presence or of anything that lived.

But the men of the train did not relax their caution. They were approaching now up a sort of shallow trough containing a dry sandy bed, down which water evidently flowed during the wet season into the river. It, also, for the last half mile before it reached the main stream, had trees and bushes on either shore. Middleton suggested that they beat up this narrow strip of forest, lest they walk straight into an ambush. Woodfall thought the idea good, and twenty men scouted the thickets. They found nothing, and many in the train began to feel incredulous. That Comanche had been a mere boaster. He was probably still galloping away over the prairie, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the Santa Fé train. But Middleton yet distrusted. He seemed now to be in every sense the leader of the train, and he d