"Where are you going?" asked Billy.
"Where are we going?" said Phil. "Well, when this snow lightens a little we are going to ride a long distance through the woods. Perhaps we'll ride until morning. Then, when morning comes, we'll keep on riding, although it may not be in the forest. We'll make a great circle to the south, and there, at the edge of the forest, we'll come to a beautiful clear little lake that four men I know call The Silver Cup, only you can't get at the contents of that cup just now, as it has a fine ice covering. But overlooking The Silver Cup is a fine rocky hollow with a neat little thatched cabin in it. We call the hollow and the cabin The Dip, and in it are two of the four persons, your father and I being the other two.
"It's a fine little place, a snug little place, Billy, and there isn't any lodge anywhere on this whole continent of North America that is equal to it. There is a big flat stone at one end on which we build our fire, and just above it is a vent to carry off the smoke.
"Hanging about that cabin are some of the most beautiful skins and furs you ever saw. And then we have rifles and pistols and knives and hatchets, and a shovel and an ax or two, and big soft blankets, and, when we are all in the hut at night, every fellow rolled in his warm blanket, as you will be, being a brave new comrade, and when the wind roars outside, and the hail and the snow beat against it and never touch you, then you feel just about as fine as anybody can ever feel. It's surely a glorious life that's ahead of you, Billy Arenberg. Those other two fellows who are waiting for you, Billy, are as good as any you ever saw. One of them is my brother, who has just escaped from a great prison, where wicked men held him for a long time, just as you have escaped, Billy, from the savages, to whom you don't belong, and the other is the bravest, oddest, wisest, funniest man you ever saw. You can't help liking him the very first moment you see him. He talks a lot, but it's all worth hearing. Now and then he makes up queer rhymes. I don't think he could get them printed, but we like them all the same, and they always mean just what they say, which isn't generally the way of poetry. I see right now, Billy, that that man and you are going to be great friends. His name is William, just like yours, William Breakstone, but he's Bill and you are Billy. It will be fine to have a Bill and a Billy around the camp."
The boy's eyes glistened. All sorts of emotion awoke within him.
"Won't it be fine?" he said. "I want to see that camp."
Phil had spoken with purpose. He had seen what Arenberg, thinking only of his recovered son, had failed to see, that the boy, taken in his early childhood and held so long, had acquired something of the Indian nature. He had recognized his father and he had clung to him, but he was primitive and as wild as a hawk. The escape from the Indian village had been no escape for him at all, merely a transference. Phil now devoted himself to the task of calling him back to the white world to which he belonged.
All the time as they rode forward in the snow, Phil talked to him of the great things that were to be seen where the white men dwelled. He made their lives infinitely grander and more varied than those of the Indians. He told of the mighty battle in which his father had been a combatant. Here the boy's eyes glistened more than ever.
"My father is a great warrior," he exclaimed happily.
"One of the greatest that ever lived," said Phil. "There were more men, Billy, at that place we call Buena Vista than all the Comanche warriors put together several times over. And there were many cannon, great guns on wheels, shooting bullets as big as your head and bigger, and the battle went on all day. You couldn't hear yourself speak, the cannon and rifles roared so terribly and without ever stopping, and the smoke was greater than that of the biggest prairie fire you ever saw, and thousands of men and horses, with long lances, charged again and again. And your father stood there all day helping to beat them back."