The hope in the breasts of countless men is nearly blighted; they no
longer expect to see Massai's head brought into camp done up in an old
shirt and dropped triumphantly on the ground in front of the chief of
scouts' tent, so it is time to preserve what trail we can.

Three troops of the Tenth had gone into camp for the night, and the
ghostly Montana landscape hummed with the murmur of many men. Supper was
over, and I got the old Apache chief of scouts behind his own ducking,
and demanded what he knew of an Apache Indian down in Arizona named
Massai. He knew all or nearly all that any white man will ever know.

"All right," said the chief, as he lit a cigar and tipped his sombrero
over his left eye, "but let me get it straight. Massai's trail was so
crooked, I had to study nights to keep it arranged in my head. He didn't
leave much more trail than a buzzard, anyhow, and it took years to
unravel it. But I am anticipating.

"I was chief of scouts at Apache in the fall of '90, when word was
brought in that an Indian girl named Natastale had disappeared, and that
her mother was found under a walnut-tree with a bullet through her body.
I immediately sent Indian scouts to take the trail. They found the
tracks of a mare and colt going by the spot, and thinking it would bring
them to the girl, they followed it. Shortly they found a moccasin track
where a man had dismounted from the mare, and without paying more
attention to the horse track, they followed it. They ran down one of my
own scouts in a _tiswin_ [An intoxicating beverage made of corn] camp,
where he was carousing with other drinkers. They sprang on him, got him
by the hair, disarmed and bound him. Then they asked him what he had
done with the girl, and why he had killed the mother, to which he
replied that 'he did not know.' When he was brought to me, about dark,