It was December, and in that climate mild and serene.

A caravan of twenty horses or mules travelling in single file, leaves a trail behind which can easily be followed.
Our adventurers were on a treeless prairie, an ocean of land, where nothing obstructed the view to the remote horizon.

One beautiful morning, just after they had taken their breakfast and resumed their march, they perceived, not a little to their alarm, some moving object far in the distance behind.

It soon resolved itself into a band of several hundred Indians, well mounted, painted and decorated in the highest style of barbaric art.

They were thoroughly armed with their deadly bows and arrows and spears.