The morning was chilly. The grass and flowers of the prairie were heavy with dew and the little voices of the night had all grown silent, only a lost dog, bereaved of his master, could be heard barking and howling in the distance. They passed a slough, where the tall rushes and grasses and the pools of open water were covered with a gray patchy blanket of fog, out of which rang the loud quacking calls of wild ducks and the low, retiring notes of hundreds of coots. From the blackbirds and swallows which the boys knew were roosting in the marsh by the thousand, came not a sound, but from the grass near the margin of the slough came the liquid, pebbly song of a marsh-wren.
“Listen, Bill,” whispered Tim, “there’s the little bird that never sleeps.”
“Oh, I guess he sleeps, all right,” replied Bill, “only he is so little that he can sleep enough in snatches.”
“We must ride faster,” said Tatanka. “The stars are getting small and the eastern sky will soon be gray, then the Dakotahs will come out of their camps.”
The four travelers wrapped themselves in their blankets, and let the willing horses fall into an easy gallop.
The boys were glad, when, at last, a big red ball pushed slowly over the distant wooded bluffs of the Minnesota, but Barker and Tatanka reined in their horses and approached the crest of every rise with the utmost caution. After traveling an hour or more, in this way, Barker and Tatanka stopped and dismounted in a small grove of oaks on a high knoll, after they had made sure that no tracks led into the patch of timber.
“Here we eat breakfast,” Barker told the boys.
“Why don’t we hide in a hollow where we can’t be seen?” asked Bill.
Tatanka laughed at this question. “In a hollow,” he replied, “Dakotahs see us first; on a hill, we see them first.”
To the surprise of the boys, the Indian even started a fire and on several green sticks began to fry slices of bacon and ham.