"Don't you flurry," said Jim, "they have run on ahead, not to frolic, but to clear the trail and select a camping ground."
"Nothing to keep us here, eh?"
"Not a thing."
"Then we're off!" cried the party, all afoot, and everything buckled on.
"Come on!"
The whole band quitted the retreat by the subterranean way already described.
It was a cold but fine morning, the air pure, the sky blue. The sun had pretty well thawed the snow, and as a grizzled old trapper said: "Just the weather for a feller to go ten miles a-sparking his gal." The party moved in Indian or single file at a good, regular pace, which took them briskly away from the starting point. As the horses were useless, they were left behind under guard.
The course brought the long string of men past the Red River company, and Ridge remarked with some surprise that they who had been so long quiet now showed signs of pulling up stakes and departing. It was to coalesce with Kidd. This set Ridge thinking, and even made him uneasy. Still, he let no evidence of this appear, but went on in meditation. He was not the man to neglect any precaution, or learning what this movement portended. Whilst walking on he was fingering several pebbles which he had merely mechanically picked up, as an observer would have thought.
On coming to a place where their route made an elbow, he stopped, without saying anything to his followers, whom he let pass in review. When the last had utterly gone from sight, and he was sure no one else had an eye on him, he picked out three trees, which naturally formed a very regular triangle. Into each of these three he climbed to the crotch, where he scratched a ledge in the mossy bark, very like what a bird would make hunting for grubs. He kept the moss and grated wood carefully, and laid the stone in the little shelf, where it rested almost invisible, unless to an experienced eye, and that, too, looking for it. After having executed this operation on all three trees, we say, the Yellowstone Yager made a heap of all the moss and débris at the foot of the one which was apex to the trio. Leading up to this cone, scattered over with leaves, he placed lines of stones, to say nothing of other arrangements of pebbles which, though to all seeming in disorder, undoubtedly conveyed a meaning, for he went over them, and, like a printer correcting his types, modified them scrupulously.
Having once more scrutinised the neighbourhood, to be certain he had no spy on him, he took up his rifle and strode off, merrily whistling to himself, to overtake his comrades, who had not slackened their gait for him.