Hitherto their journey had led through the land of the Nez Perces, who were a friendly tribe, and they had been undisturbed; but when they made this new camp Gummery Glyndon told them they might now expect trouble from the Indians.
“There’s three tribes through here,” he said, “and there ain’t much choice between ’em. There’s the Cayuses, the Yakimas, and the Umatillas—a pesky set of murdering thieves the lot of ’em. They all belong to the great Snake Nation, I believe—red sarpints, every mother’s son of ’em.”
When he returned from his hunt he told them that he had seen “Indian sign.”
“There’s Injuns watching us, and we shall hear from them,” he said. “We’ll have to keep a sharp watch to-night, or they’ll stampede our animals.”
The lieutenant and the surveyors did not neglect this warning. They had great confidence in the old hunter’s judgment.
When the supper was disposed of the camp was placed in as good a condition of defense as the locality would permit. The ground had been well selected; it was a little grove on the river’s bank, a kind of oasis among the cliffs, which rose beetling upon either side, precipitously, and, apparently, inaccessible. These cliffs were some distance—a long rifle-shot—from the little grove, and a kind of rocky valley lay between them, devoid of vegetation in many places, where the hard rocks cropped up. Through this valley must the foe come, or else risk their necks, or a plunge into the river, by attempting to skirt the cliffs.
The horses belonging to the party were secured in the grove. In the center of the grove, in a kind of natural fireplace formed by the rocks, the fire had been built, and its red embers were still glowing. Two sentinels were posted at either extremity of the camp. Around the fire the hunter, the surveyors, and the lieutenant were stretched in easy attitudes, enjoying their pipes of tobacco—the great luxury of the wilderness.
A short distance from them the two boys reclined upon a mossy bowlder, listening to their conversation.
The sun had sunk, and the glorious twilight of that western land was upon them. The scene was of calm tranquillity. But that tranquillity was broken in a singular manner.
There came a hurtling sound in the air, and an arrow descended, apparently from the heavens, and stuck quivering in the turf at Lieutenant Gardiner’s head.