"Our clothes and our rifles," whispered Henry. "We must get them at once."
"They fired from the fort just in time," said Tom Wilmore.
Henry glanced upward. The palisade was at least three hundred yards away.
"Those bullets did not come from Fort Prescott," he said. "It's too far from us, and they were fired by better marksmen than any who are up there now."
"I think so, too," said Seth Cole, "an' I'm wonderin' who pulled them triggers."
Shif'less Sol and Tom Ross were first in Henry's mind, but he knew that both had suffered wounds sufficient to keep them quiet for several days, and he believed that the timely shots were the work of other hands. Whoever the strangers might be they had certainly proved themselves the best and most timely of friends.
They reached the thicket in which they had hidden their clothes and rifles, and found them untouched.
"Queer how much confidence clothes give to a feller!" exclaimed Seth Cole, as he slipped on his buckskins.
"It's so," said Henry, "and it's so, too, that you're not a whole man until you get back your rifle."
When he grasped the beautiful weapon which had been his prize he felt strength flowing in a full tide in every vein. Before he was halt, a cripple, but now he was a match for anybody. He heard a quick, gasping breath, and the sound of a soft fall.