"Do yez kaap your eyes about yez till I'z back again, for some of the coppery gintlemen may take a notion to pay yez a visit."
The boys felt a little uneasiness as they saw their companion enter the canoe and paddle toward the eastern shore—the shore which as yet had been unvisited by them. They watched until he landed, pulled the boat up behind him into shelter, and then disappeared in the wood.
"We shall be in rather a bad situation if he never comes back," remarked Elwood.
"I don't know about that; in what better occupation can we be found than in ministering to the wants of a suffering Indian? Would not that itself protect us from injury?"
"Perhaps it might; but what would become of us any way? They wouldn't be kind enough to guide us up to San Francisco."
"They might take us so far that we could find our way."
"Hardly; I don't like to see Tim go to that shore; it looks too dangerous. I wonder why he did it?"
"He must have believed there is more game there."
"But there is enough on the other side, and he would avoid this greater danger by going there."
"I imagine that a river running through a hostile country is as dangerous upon one side as upon the other, and there is little choice, Howard, in the matter."