“I reckon I shan’t bother myself much to foller their trail,” soliloquized the old guide. “The Injuns, of course, are going to the village of the ‘Thunder-Cloud,’ an’ I think I could find that in the darkest night I ever did see. So I’ll ride on slowly an’ not worry myself. It’s ’bout two days’ journey, if the Crows travel fast, an’ I kinder think they will. So, old hoss, you an’ I will take it easy.”
And so the hunter journeyed on leisurely. For the first five miles the trail led by the bank of the Yellowstone; then the river turned abruptly to the south, and the trail, parting from it, led across the prairie, westward.
At sundown the hunter selected a convenient clump of timber, let his horse feed on the fresh young prairie-grass, made a scanty meal from a store of sun-dried beef and some hard crackers that he carried, soldier-fashion, in his saddle-bags; then, after a careful survey of the country around, went to sleep.
Early at sunrise on the following morning the “Crow-Killer” awoke, made another scanty meal, mounted his horse and again rode on the trail.
The savages had not even taken the trouble to conceal their tracks, confident, doubtless, in the number of their band and the improbability of any one following in pursuit. So the old hunter had but little trouble in following the plainly-defined trail.
On the evening of the second day, thinking that he was within ten miles of the Indian camp, the old guide dismounted and halted for the night.
The third morning’s light found him again in the saddle.
The surface of the country had greatly changed, and showed that he was at the base of the Rocky Mountains; though on the east bank of the river, beyond the timber that fringed the stream, commenced the vast prairie that extended eastward to the junction of the Yellowstone and the Missouri rivers, and which is commonly called the valley of the Yellowstone, as fertile a spot of land as the sun ever shone upon.
The “Crow-Killer” recrossed the river, made a circuit around the Indian village so as to approach it from the north, as Dave would come up the bank of the river from the north and it would clearly be an impossibility for the guide to meet him if he remained south of the Indian village.
The “Crow-Killer” accomplished his purpose; he could easily tell the position of the village, by the smoke arising from it and floating on the clear mountain air.