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Five feet, full in front of us they pulled in their horses to a dead stop—unpleasantly, close, unpleasantly sudden. Then there was an electric silence, such as comes between the lightning’s flash and the thunder’s crack. The Indians glared at us. We stared at the Indians, each measuring the other. Not a sound broke the stillness of that desolate spot, save the noisy panting of the horses as they stood, still braced from the shock of the sudden stop.
For three interminable minutes we faced each other without a move. Then one of the Indians slowly roved his eyes all over the place, searching suspiciously. From where he stood the tell-tale mummy was hidden by the bank and some bushes, and the tell-tale brass rings and armlet were in my gloves which I held as jauntily as possible. He saw nothing wrong. He turned again to us. We betrayed no signs of agitation. Then he spoke grimly, with a deep scowl on his ugly face:
“No touch ’em; savey?” giving a significant jerk of the head towards the trees.
We responded by a negative shake of the head. Oh, those brass rings! Why did I want to steal brass rings from the left thumb of an Indian woman mummy! Me! I should be carving my name on roadside trees next!
There was another silence as before. None of us had changed positions, so much as a leaf’s thickness. Then the second Indian, grim and ugly as the first, spoke sullenly:
“No touch ’em; savey?” He laid his hand suggestively on something in his belt.
Again we shook our heads in a way that deprecated the very idea of such a thing. They gave another dissatisfied look around, and slowly turned their horses.
We waited breathless to see which way they would go. If they went on the other side of the gully, they must surely see that bundle on the ground and—who can tell what might happen? But they did not. With many a look backwards, they slowly rode away, and with them the passive elements of a tragedy.
I tied my ill-gotten, ill-smelling pelt on the handle bar of the doctor’s wife’s bicycle, and we hurried home like spanked children. That night, after I had delivered unto the doctor’s wife her own, and disinfected the gewgaws in carbolic, I added two more subjects to my Never-again list—bicycling in Montana and ‘dead hunts.’