“An outbreak! The settlers are flocking into the Fort in droves. Black Hawk and his followers have come too close for comfort. This miserable fellow has been tampering with the stores. He couldn’t get at the ammunition, but he’s done all the evil he could. I caught him hobnobbing with a low Sac; a spy, I think. There. He’s bound, and now I’ll fasten him in the wood-shed. He knows too much about this town to be left in freedom.”
Yet, after all, they did not have to flee from home, as Gaspar had feared, though the Sun Maid put on her peace dress and unbound her glorious hair, ready at any moment to ride forth and meet the Indians and to try her powers of promoting good-feeling. The Snowbird stood saddled for many days: yet it was only upon errands of hospitality and charity that he was needed.
Gaspar, however, was always in the saddle. When he was not riding far afield, scouting the movements of the Black Hawk forces, he was searching the countryside for provisions and himself guiding the wagons that brought in the scant supplies. One evening he returned more cheerful than he had seemed for many days and exclaimed as he tossed aside his cap:
“This has been a good trip, for two reasons.”
“What are they, dear?”
“Starvation is staved off for a while and the Indians are evidently in grave doubts of their own success in this horrid war.”
“Starvation, Gaspar? Has it been as bad as that?”
“Pretty close to it. But I’ve found a couple of men who had about a hundred and fifty head of cattle, and they’ve driven them here into the stockade. As long as they last, we shall manage. The other good thing is—that the Black Hawks are sacrificing to the Evil Spirit.”
“They are! That shows they are hopeless of their own success.”
“Certainly very doubtful of it. It is the dog immolation. I saw one instance myself and met a man who had come from the southwest. He has passed them at intervals of a day’s journey; always the same sort. The wretched little dog, fastened just above the ground, the nose pointing straight this way and the fire beneath.”