The Pawnees understood. They saw the muskets half leveled, and the grim, determined faces behind. A warrior stretched out his hand, stealthily, to a pack—and John Spark’s muzzle covered him in a flash. He jumped back.
“Go!” suddenly ordered the head chief. The Pawnees sullenly gathered their presents, and without another word filed away, the whole sixty.
“See if we’ve lost anything, sergeant,” said the lieutenant.
“One sword, one tomahawk, one axe, five canteens and some smaller stuff missing, sir,” was the report.
The soldiers waited eagerly. They wished to follow and fight.
“No matter,” gruffly answered the lieutenant. “We must save our lives for our work, my men. We have work to do. Forward, march.” He shrugged his shoulders, and added, to the doctor: “I feel as badly as they do. This is the first time I ever swallowed an insult to the Government and the uniform. But our number is too small to risk failure of our plans. Now for the mountains.”
“By gar, once more my scalp was loose,” said Baroney, to Stub.
“Yes. They had black hearts, those Grand Pawnee,” Stub gravely agreed.
This day they marched seventeen miles, and the next day nineteen miles. In all they had come more than one hundred and twenty miles, their eyes upon the Big Blue Mountain, as the lieutenant called it. And at last they had just about overtaken it.
From camp, here where the river split into two large forks, one out of the west, the other out of the south, the Big Blue Mountain looked to be quite near, up a small north fork.