“Oh! then there is a way out of the trap?” cried Percy Vere.
“I reckon; I never got into so bad a scrape but what I could find a way out of it. Let’s travel. We’ve found out enough, and the quicker we get back to the camp now the better. We know that there is a way up to the cliff’s top here, and we’ve found out that there’s a woman in the party, so we can understand something of Smoholler’s deviltry last night.”
“Yes, but this woman is a squaw, is she not?”
“Of course.”
“But the vision that appeared upon the cliff was white, how can you account for that?” urged Percy Vere.
Glyndon shook his head in a bewildered manner.
“I can’t account for it,” he answered, reflectively. “She was white, as you say, and if she wasn’t an angel she looked enough like one to be one. The sight of her face affected me strangely—I hain’t cried for years, and yet I felt the tears coming as I looked at her. It’s witchcraft, and this Injun Prophet just knows how to play it. I don’t wonder that the savages think he’s something great. I’d like to see him once, just to see what kind of a man he is; but I don’t want to see him just now—it might not be wholesome,” he added, dryly. “He might lift my ha’r without the formality of an introduction. It’s lucky I didn’t let you shoot at that elk when you wanted to. The sound of your rifle would have brought the whole squad down upon us.”
A peculiar cry arose on the air.
“What’s that?” asked Percy Vere; a presentiment of evil entering his mind as he listened to it.
“That’s some bird calling for its mate,” said Cute.