We advanced slowly until we were about a hundred yards from the signalers and brought our horses to a stand.
"Who are you?" I signed to them.
One of them, dropping his bow and arrows, extended his arms and rapidly raised and lowered them several times in imitation of the wings of a bird, the sign for the Crow tribe. Then he waved his right hand above his shoulder, the query sign that I had made.
"We want nothing to do with them," Pitamakan said to me hurriedly.
I signed that I was white.
"The rider with you, who is he? Where are you camped? Let us be friends and go together to your camp," the Crow signed. Then his companion added, "Come, let us meet and sit and smoke a peace pipe. We are two, you are two. It will be good for the four of us to be friends and smoke."
"What a lie! Now I am sure they want to trap us! Signing to us that they are but two! Close behind them the timber is full of Crows!" Pitamakan muttered.
"What shall we do?" I asked him. "Cross the river, ride off beyond the breaks, where they can't see us, and then turn homeward?"
"It would be useless to do that. They are bound north and will see our camp; we may as well make a straight ride to it."
"Well, then, we go," I said and pressed a heel against Is-spai-u's side.