Will, who was lying on the turf propped up by his elbow before the fire, looked up at the skies, which were now a clear silver, in which countless stars appeared to hang, lower and larger than he had ever seen them before. It was a beautiful sky, and whether it was merely fate or chance that had sent the Little Giant to his aid he felt with the poet that God was in his heaven, and, for the time at least, all was right with his world.
"You got a good sight of the Indian, did you, Tom?" asked Boyd.
"I saw him plain through the glasses. He wuz a Sioux. I couldn't make no mistake. Like ez not he wuz a hunter from the village we saw on the slope below, an' whar one hunter is another may not be fur away."
"Thinking as you do," said Boyd, "and thinking as I do the same way you do, I think we'd better put out our fire and shift to another part of the valley."
"That's a lot of 'thinks,'" said Brady, "but it seems to me that you're both right, and I've no doubt such thoughts are put into our minds to save our lives. Perhaps it would be best for us to start up the slopes at once, but if our time is coming tonight it will come and no flight of ours will alter it."
Nevertheless they took the precaution to stamp out the last coal, and then moved silently with the animals to another part of the dip. While they were tethering their horses and mules there in a little glade all the animals began to tremble violently and it required Will's utmost efforts to soothe them. The acute ears of Brady detected a low growling on their right, not far from the base of the cliff.
"Come, Tom," he said to the Little Giant. "You and I will see what it is, and be sure you're ready with that rifle of yours. You ought to shoot beautifully in this clear moonlight."
They disappeared among the bushes, but returned in a few minutes, although the growling had become louder and was continuous. Both men had lost a little of their ruddiness.
"What was it?" asked Will.
"It wuz your friend, the Sioux warrior who held you in the cliff so long," replied the Little Giant, shuddering. "Half a dozen big mountain wolves are quarrelin' 'bout the right place to bury him in. But, anyway, he's bein' buried, an' mighty fast too."