noon
These people -- two brothers and two children -- had their cabin in a hollow close by a tumbling brook and to one side of the trace . I planned to make a slight détour and pass a word with them and to warn them to be watchful . The fact that Hughes had found signs near the mountains would indicate the Indians had planned a raid against some isolated home , and as there was no footing in the trace I followed , it might easily be that the enemy had entered lower down . Along toward the noon hour I topped a ridge and decided I would halt and eat at the first spring or brook I came to . My horse , an old campaigner in wilderness work , pricked his ears as we began dipping down the gentle slope . I studied the path ahead and the timbered slopes on both sides to discover the cause of this attention . The animal was intelligent .