"Now for a confab," said Lewis, as his companions gathered about him. "I wonder what they are going to jabber about?"
"What do you want to know for, eh?" asked Tom.
"It's pretty plain they're going to cross the river, but, confound it, how can we tell where it's going to be done? I've told you that the bank gets so low, just yonder, that it won't hide us any longer."
"Who wants it to hide us? They intend to cross the river here, and in about ten minutes, too. Just watch their actions, if you can do it without showing your head."
The Indians stood together, conversing upon some point about which there seemed a variance of opinion. Their deep, guttural, ejaculatory words were plainly audible to the hunters, and their gleaming, bedaubed visages were seen in all their hideous repulsiveness. They gesticulated continually, pointing behind them in the direction of their trail, and across the river, over the heads of the crouching Riflemen, who were watching every motion. Nothing would have been easier for the latter than to have sent four of these savages into eternity without a moment's warning; yet, nothing was further from their intentions, for, of all things, this would have been the surest to defeat their chief object. The captive would have been brained the instant the savages saw they could not hold her. The great point was to surprise them so suddenly and completely as to prevent this.
From the present appearance of matters, this seemed not very difficult of accomplishment, as it was a foregone conclusion upon the part of the hunters that the savages would endeavor to ford the river at the point where they lay in ambush for them. It only remained for the Riflemen to bide their time, and, at the proper moment, rush upon and scatter them, and rescue the captive from their hands.
"I wonder whether they're going to talk all day," remarked Tom, impatiently, after they had conversed some twenty or thirty minutes.
"They're in a dispute about something. It won't take them long to get through with it."
"How do you know that, I should like to know? Like enough they'll talk till dark, and keep us waiting. Confound 'em, what's the use?"
No one ventured to reply to Tom's sulky observation, and, after several impatient exclamations, he added: