So they crept cautiously towards the smoke, until at length they were lying flat on the ground, on the edge of a low bank, with their heads hidden in tufts of grass, peering into a small encampment of Indians just below them. They had hardly gained this position when Glen, uttering a cry of horror, sprang down the bank, rushed in among the Indians, and, snatching a piece of meat from the hands of one of them, who was raising it to his mouth, flung it so far away that it was snapped up and swallowed by a lean, wolfish-looking cur, that had not dared venture near the fire.
At Glen's sudden appearance the Indian women and children ran screaming into the bushes, while the men, springing to their feet, surrounded him with angry exclamations and significant handlings of their knives. They received a second surprise, and fell back a little as "Billy" Brackett, who had not at first understood Glen's precipitate action, came rushing down the bank after him, shouting, "Stand back, you villains! If you lay a hand on him, I'll blow the tops of all your heads off!"
At the same time Glen was making all the faces expressive of extreme disgust that he could think of, and saying, as he pointed to a pile of meat lying in a gunny-sack beside the fire:
"Carne no bueno! Muy mal! No bueno por hombre!" which was the best Spanish he knew for, "The meat is not good. It is very bad, and not at all good for a man to eat."
But the Indians could not understand. The meat might not be good enough for white men, who were so very particular, but it was good enough for them. The white men had thrown it away and they had found it. They meant to eat it, too, for they were very hungry. Now, if these uninvited guests to their camp would not clear out and let them eat their breakfast in peace, they must suffer the consequences.
This is what they said; but neither Glen nor "Billy" Brackett understood a word of it. They were preparing to defend themselves, as well as they could, from the scowling Indians, who were again advancing upon them with drawn knives.
Both Glen and his companion had their rifles, and now, as they stepped slowly backward, they held them ready for instant use.
"We won't fire," said "Billy" Brackett, "unless they point a gun or an arrow at us; for the first shot will be the signal for a rush, and if they make that we haven't got a living show."
All this time the Indians, to the number of a dozen or so, advanced steadily, taking step for step with the whites, as they fell back, and watching for a chance to get past or around the black muzzles of those rifles.