'It's no good, Warwolf,' said Dick, 'with a party as big as ours they would catch us before to-morrow midday. You and the Cradle may get off if you are clever, and they won't follow us up there,' pointing to the peak, now showing in places through the morning mists above the great pines.
Without a word the Indian turned and left them, backing the pony carefully over the old trail; he had already risked more than a thousand Crows in coming so near to the accursed spot, and he would not wait to hear the air full of the rushing of wings and see Okeeheedee stoop from his mountain crag and destroy the white men.
Frank's strength was coming back a little by this time, so that with Snap and Dick to help him he was able to walk with the rest.
As the sun rose the little party emerged from the forest on to a small prairie, from the further side of which rose the abrupt black mass of the Lone Mountain, an isolated spur of the chain which separated the land of the Crows from the hunting-grounds of the Blackfeet. Round the foot of the great rock wound a rapid stream, which had risen somewhere in the mountains beyond it, and perhaps a thousand feet above the stream was a broad, grassy terrace covered with tents, banners, and what looked in the faint light of dawn like the figures of men.
'Sink down!' cried Snap as he caught sight of this encampment. 'The Crows are there before us.'
'No, they aren't,' replied Dick; 'them's Blackfeet there.'
'Then we're safe, aren't we?' asked Frank with a sigh of relief.
'Not yet, my hearty,' replied Dick cheerily, 'but we soon shall be. Them's dead Blackfeet up there, and I guess they'll skeer the Crows more nor live 'uns.'
'Dead Blackfeet!' ejaculated Towzer.
'Yes, young 'un, just a graveyard, that's all!' replied Wharton.