“How did you know the direction we had taken?” asked Percy, curiously.
“A sentinel posted upon the cliff gave us warning. Nothing can escape the vigilance of my scouts. They have eyes like hawks. Yonder camp is hemmed in—they must recross the river or I shall drive them into it.”
He clapped his hands and an Indian boy came bounding toward him—a boy with a graceful, lithe form, and step as bounding as that of an antelope. He was handsomely dressed, and wore the same colors as the Prophet, and was, evidently, his familiar attendant, or page.
Like the Prophet, he wore a head-dress taken from an animal, but his was the head of an antelope. The sharp horns were left, and the whole face of the animal preserved in such a manner that the boy’s face was completely covered by it, and his dark eyes glistened through the eye-holes; and so nicely was the skin fitted to his face, that he appeared to be a boy with an antelope’s head.
“Jumping ginger!” exclaimed Cute, as the boy bounded lightly forward; “what kind of a critter is that, anyway?”
“Glyndon was mistaken,” remarked Percy, thoughtfully, as he watched the Indian boy’s approach.
“In what?”
“It was his tracks we saw. There’s no squaw in the party.”
“That’s so, by king! I never thought of it before; but you are right, there isn’t.”
“Oneotah,” said the Prophet to the boy; “prepare some venison steaks for us.”