Walter nodded. Even if the Periers and Brabants had passed the Bois des Sioux before daybreak, they could not have reached Lake Traverse yet. They had a long way to go with tired horses. It was not impossible for the Indians, riding hard on fresh ponies, to overtake them. Murray and his savages must not cross.
The Ojibwas were concealed among the willows of the low island. The lads could get no glimpse of them. The canoes were visible in part from where the boys were, but must be completely hidden from the opposite shore. Crouched among the bushes, the three waited, silent and almost motionless. Walter had about made up his mind that the horseman with the buffalo robe,—if it actually was a horseman,—was not coming to the ford, when Neil laid a hand on his arm and pointed across the river.
The willows were stirring,—not with wind. An animal of some kind was coming through. It was a horse. Walter could see its head, as it pushed through the growth. Then the rider came into view; a tall man with a buffalo hide wrapped about him. He was no longer trying to conceal himself under the robe. He had let it slip down as he straightened up in the saddle.
Neil uttered a low exclamation, and Walter started up from his hiding place. The whole width of the Bois des Sioux at this place was not fifty yards. The man on the opposite shore was in full sunlight at the edge of the water. He was tall, like Murray, but he was fully clothed and he wore a beard.
Raoul pulled Walter down again. “Don’t yell,” he warned in a whisper. “There may be others behind him. Scar Face can see it is not Murray. I told him how a white man warned us. He’ll let him cross. He knows he will lose his chance if he fires before he sees Murray himself.”
There was reason in what the younger boy said. Walter and Neil kept silence, but they held their breaths for fear the Ojibwas might make a mistake.
McNab’s horse took to the stream, picking its way carefully. The water was shallow, the current sluggish, and the rider was not obliged to dismount or the horse to swim. Not a leaf moved on the willow-covered islet. Not a sound, except the peaceful twittering of a bird, came from it, as Duncan McNab, unconscious of any peril from that direction, rode past the tip, and on across the stream. Intent upon finding the ford, he did not even glance back, so caught no glimpse of the birch canoes.
Before McNab reached shore, Neil had left his post and slipped through the bushes to meet him. In a few moments he was back again, the trader, without his buffalo robe and horse, following. He squatted down beside Walter and looked at the island and the bark canoes. Neil had told him of Scar Face and his companions.
“Are the Sioux after you?” Walter whispered.
“That I don’t know,” was the response in French. “I suspect Murray would set them on me if he could. When he and some of the young fools started for your camp this morning, I thought it was time for me to be away. So I took short leave of Chief Tatanka Wechacheta. I struck your trail at the head of the coulee.”