“Didn’t bring anything to eat, did you?” suggested Scott.
Bucks looked blank. “I never thought of it,” he exclaimed. “Did you bring anything?”
“Nothing but this,” answered Scott, holding up a small buckskin sack fitted with drawing strings.
“What is that, Bob?”
“It is what I carry wherever I ride. I carry nothing else. And it is only a little bag of salt.”
“A bag of salt!” cried Bucks. “Do you eat salt?”
“Wait and see,” answered the scout. “Pull your belt up a notch. We’ve got a little walking to do.”
Scott, though of Chippewa blood, had been captured when a boy by the Sioux and, adopted into the tribe, had lived with them for years. He knew the mountains better than any man that served Stanley, and the latter trusted him implicitly––nor was the confidence ever betrayed.
Walking rapidly over a low-lying divide beyond 44 which lay a broad valley marking the course of a shallow creek, Scott paused behind a clump of cedars to scan the country. He expected to find antelope along the creek, but could see none in any direction. Half a mile more of scouting explained the absence of game, and Scott pointed out to Bucks the trail of an Indian hunting party that had passed up the valley in the morning. They were Cheyennes, Scott told his companion, three warriors and two squaws––reading the information from signs that were as plain to him as print––though Bucks understood nothing of it. In the circumstances there was nothing for it but a fresh venture, and, remounting, the Indian led the boy ten miles farther north to where the plains stretched in a succession of magnificent plateaus, toward the Sleepy Cat Mountains.
“We are in real Sioux country now,” observed Scott, as he again dismounted. “And we are as likely now to uncover a war party as a herd of antelope.”