Ambrose smelled treachery. He shook his head. "I'll escape if I can!"
Watusk shrugged his shoulder and turned away.
"You foolish," he said. "I your friend. Good-by."
"Good-by," returned Ambrose ironically.
Ambrose walked his floor, studying Watusk's words from every angle. The result of his cogitations was nil. Watusk's mind was at the same time too devious and too inconsequential for a mind like Ambrose's to track it. Ambrose decided that he was like one of the childish, unreasonable liars one meets in the mentally defective of our own race. Such a one is clever to no purpose: he will blandly attempt to lie away the presence of truth.
In the middle of the afternoon Ambrose, making his endless tramp back and forth across the little shack, paused to take an observation from the window, and saw three horsemen come tearing down the trail into camp.
They flung themselves off their horses with excited gestures, and the camp was instantly thrown into confusion. The natives darted among the teepees like ants when their hill is broken into.
Watusk appeared, buckling on his belts. The women that were left in camp started to scuttle toward the river, dragging their children after them.
Ambrose's heart bounded at the prospect of a diversion. Whatever happened, his lot could be no worse. At the first alarm three of his jailers had run down to the teepees. They came back in a hurry.
The door of the shack was thrown open, and the whole six rushed in and seized him. Ambrose, seeking to delay them, struggled hard. They finally got his hands and feet tied, cursing him heartily in their own tongue. They hustled him down to the riverside.