'Wal, share and share alike is prairie law, when you do make a find,' Wharton answered, 'but I'd sell my share for a sight of Rosebud and a square meal of beans and bacon right now!'
After a pause the little party crept to the edge of their nest and, looking over, could see the Indian watch-fires glowing in the gathering gloom of night. Long columns of blue smoke rose up among the pines, and a camp like the camp of an army was pitched on the edge of the prairie.
'I doubt if Warwolf would do much good even if he did get through,' said Wharton. 'Those Crows we put up have just gone back to the fishing-camp and brought the whole tribe about our heels. There are a couple of hundred men there, if there is one.'
No one had an answer to make to this speech, so they all lay there watching. It seemed such a strangely cruel lot to be hung like Mahomet's coffin halfway between heaven and earth, cut off from both—still alive, and yet beyond reach of the living. Surely no sailor on a desert island was ever so deserted as they; he at least could swim in the element which hemmed him in, but for them there was no way of escape. It was doubtful even whether the strongest of them could ever climb down the way they came. For the other two such a feat was certainly impossible. And what could swim in the element which closed them in? The eagle, and the raven, and——
Snap stopped thinking, and broke the silence.
'Dick, there is only one way out of this, and we've got to try it. We can't stay here and starve,' he said.
'Not pleasant, is it?' replied Wharton; 'but what are we going to do? We can't eat bed-rock and we can't fly.'
'Yes, we can,' was Snap's unexpected answer, 'at least that balloon can; and if you are game we'll try it to-morrow.'
'What! go up in that thing? not I, sonny,' replied the old cowboy; 'I don't mind your hanging me out on a clothes-line again over them rocks if so be as you think my constitution requires it, but I'll be dog-goned if I'll go up in that thing.'
Now, 'dog-goned' was a rare expression with Dick and was generally supposed by his friends to mean that he had issued an ultimatum. If in the old days at the ranche he had said that he would be 'dog-goned' if So-and-so shouldn't git next day, you might as well say good-bye to So-and-so, for next morning, 'bright and early,' he invariably 'got.' So, then, this rebellion of Dick's was rather a formidable thing, and one not to be treated lightly.