THE BLACKFEET CAMP
They soon found Little Raven and Running Dog, and then they set out to join the war party. As they rode swiftly through the night Lean Wolf asked White Otter to tell about his daring stratagem against the Crows.
"How did you come to find us?" Lean Wolf asked him.
"When we came back from the ridge, Sun Bird asked our friends about you," said White Otter. "They told us that you went away and did not come back. We felt bad about it. Sun Bird sent us to look for you. Pretty soon we found the tracks of your ponies. We followed them to that gully. Then we saw what had happened. We thought the Blackfeet had caught you. It was easy to follow all those pony tracks. Then we came in sight of the place where you were hiding. We lay down behind a ridge to watch. We saw a war party of Crows. Then I told Running Dog and Little Raven how I fooled those people. I said, 'I will fool them again.' Then we frightened away the ponies and made the Crows run out. That is all I have to say about it."
Soon afterward they encountered the Minneconjoux war party advancing carefully along the edge of the timber. However, when Sun Bird learned that the Crows were only a short distance ahead of him, he immediately ordered a halt.
"If we keep going ahead we will run into those people," he told his companions. "That would be foolish. We have set out to fight the Blackfeet. We must keep ourselves strong until we meet them."
"Yes, it would be foolish to risk our lives until we have done what we set out to do," the Minneconjoux told one another.
They made a wide detour, therefore, and circled far out on the plain to avoid meeting their enemies. Daylight was close at hand when they finally returned to the foothills. Having passed safely by the cañon without hearing anything of the Crows, the Sioux believed that there was little further danger of again encountering those hated foes.
"We are getting close to the Blackfeet camp, the Crows will not come this way," said Sun Bird.
"They have gone to tell their people how the Blackfeet fooled them," Lean Wolf said, jokingly.