“Bob, if they are hungry, give them some antelope.”
Scott, who had meant to suggest the same thing, was pleased that the offer should come from his companion, and so told the wounded Indian. The latter drew himself up with dignity and spoke a few rapid words. “He says he is glad,” translated Bob, “that your heart is big. And that it will be safer to go farther into the canyon. The Cheyennes are hunting for them all around here, and if you are not afraid to camp with the Sioux, we will stay with them here to-night. While the Cheyennes are hunting them, they might find us. It will be about the safest thing we can do.”
“You know best,” said his companion. “Can you trust this man?”
“Trust him?” echoed Bob mildly. “I wish I could trust the word of a white man half as far as I can that of a Sioux. He understands everything you say.”
“Can he talk English?” asked Bucks in surprise.
“Better than I can.”
It was with queer sensations that Bucks found himself in a hostile country and with the deadliest enemies of the white man going into camp for the night. Within a minute or two after Scott and the wounded brave had picked a defended camp near a rivulet of water, the two squaws had a fire going, and they set to work at once dressing an antelope.
Savory morsels were cut from choice spots on the carcasses and these were broiled by impaling them on long sticks over the fire. Bucks, learning very fast with his eyes, saw how surprisingly small an affair an Indian camp-fire is, and how much could be done with a few buffalo chips, if one understood how to keep them renewed. Both safety and convenience were served by the tiny blaze, and meat never tasted as good to Bucks as it did on that clear, frosty night, broiled by the two women and garnished from Bob Scott’s provident salt bag.
After satisfying his ravenous hunger, which the Indians considered not even a fair appetite, Bucks 50 asked to look at the warrior’s injured arm, explaining that his father had been an army surgeon in the great white man’s war, as Bob Scott designated the Civil War in translating for the Sioux. The arm, which was badly swollen, he found had indeed been broken by a bullet near the wrist, but only one bone was fractured, and, finding no trace of the bullet, the confident young surgeon offered to set the fracture.