“That’s so. We can go down and see, and if they are strangers we need not intrude upon them. We can go a mile or two farther up the stream.”
The boys rode down the swell, and in a few minutes reached the willows that lined both banks of the stream. No sooner had they entered them than a chorus of angry yelps and growls arose in advance, and three or four gaunt, savage-looking hounds came toward them with open mouths.
“Begone, you brutes!” shouted a voice. “Begone, I say! Come on, strangers, whoever you be. They won’t pester you.”
The boys kept on, and when they reached the other side of the willows, came in sight of the camp. Two covered wagons were drawn up, one on each side of the fire, and a span of small, shaggy mules and a yoke of very poor oxen were grazing close by on the prairie. About the fire were gathered a party of men, women and children, half a score in number, all but two of whom the boys at once put down as emigrants. Three of these emigrants were men—one an old gray-headed patriarch, and the others sturdy young fellows, one of whom must have been some relation to the old man, if there was any faith to be put in the resemblance they bore to each other.
The two who were not emigrants reminded the boys of that brace of worthies who had ridden into their camp on the night Walter was spirited away—Parks and Reed—who were now safe in irons in the Fort. The dress and accoutrements of these men proclaimed them to be hunters, but their faces told a different story. They did not seem at all pleased to see the boys, but the old man welcomed him cordially.
“How do, strangers?” said he. “Alight and hitch.”
“We’re obliged to you,” said Archie, “but we have no wish to intrude. We thought, when we saw the smoke of your fire, that perhaps we should find some of our friends here. We’ll make our camp a little farther up the stream.”
“No intrusion at all,” said the old man. “You are almost the only white folks we’ve seen for weeks till we fell in with our friends here——” nodding his head toward the two hunters—“and we’d like to talk to you.”
Archie hesitated. If the old man wanted him and his companions to camp with him, it was plain that the hunters did not, and he was well enough acquainted with men of their class to know that it was sometimes a dangerous proceeding to act in opposition to their wishes. But then these men did not belong to the train. Archie judged by what the old man said that he and his company had fallen in with them accidentally during their journey across the prairie, and if that was the case, they had nothing to say.
“Better get down,” urged the emigrant. “We’ve got grub enough to feed you. We’re on our way to Fort Bolton; where might you be a travellin’ to?”