There was no rider.
Buddy rode home without the missing horses, and did not tell anyone about the Indian, though his thoughts would not leave the subject.
He wondered what mother would think of it.

Mother's interests seemed mostly confined to teaching Buddy and Dulcie what they were deprived of learning in schools, and to play the piano--a wonderful old square piano that had come all the way from Scotland to the Tomahawk ranch, the very frontier of the West.
Mother was a wonderful woman, with a soft voice and a slight Scotch accent, and wit; and a knowledge of things which were little known in the wilderness.

Buddy never dreamed then how strangely culture was mixed with pure savagery in his life.

To him the secret regret that he had not dared ride into the bushes to scalp the Indian he believed he had shot, and the fact that his hands were straining at the full chords of the ANVIL CHORUS on that very evening, was not even to be considered unusual.

Still, certain strains of that classic were always afterward associated in his mind with the shooting of the Indian--if he had really shot him.
While he counted the time with a conscientious regard for the rests, he debated the wisdom of telling mother, and decided that perhaps he had better keep that matter to himself, like a man..