"How do things look to you?"
"Yer see that Blazing Arrer and one of his varmints has gone ahead and across the clearin' out yender. They know that we have started to round this part of the trail with the idee of comin' back agin beyend whar they're watchin' for us."
"And they will try to prevent us doing so?"
"That's it, and it's goin' to be a tough job, with the hosses to take care of."
"I've been thinking lately that the only safe plan is to abandon the animals and push on ourselves."
"That will give us the best show, thar's no doubt about that; but I hate powerfully to let the varmints get ahead of us, even as much as that."
"You and I, Simon, have tramped the woods long enough to know that we must take things as we find them. It's a hundred times better that we should leave the horses than to imperil our lives by keeping them with us."
"The man as would deny them sentiments is a fool, but we hain't got to that p'int yet."
"I notice that the ground is much more difficult to get over than where we turned out to avoid the swamp. Both the horses fell once or twice with their loads, and I had almost reached the conclusion that we would have to turn back or abandon them. They are the only animals I own, and their loss would be a serious one, but it won't do to stop at that."
While this fragmentary conversation was going on, Arqu-wao, or Red Crow, held his position as motionless as before, and seemingly occupied with something among the trees, invisible to the rest. The boys noticed that he assumed his old attitude, which had caused them so much uneasiness before. But, inasmuch as there could be no misgiving now as to his intentions, they were certain that their former suspicions were unjust. When he surrendered to them in the early light of that breaking morning, he did so unreservedly, and had done his best to serve them. It was a great comfort to know this, but how much greater it would have been had they known it from the first.