Several warriors were grouped about the fire, one giving particular attention to the cooking, the others lounging in picturesque and restful attitudes on the grass.
Rupert was quickly lifted from the pony and laid on the grass beside them, with his feet to the fire. Then the cord was taken from his wrists and a bit of the smoking venison put into his hand. He devoured it ravenously, and, his hunger appeased, presently fell into a deep sleep; having first committed himself and dear ones to the care and protection of that God who is everywhere present and almighty to defend and save.
His wounds had been rudely bound up in a way to stanch the flow of blood, it being the desire of his captors to keep him alive, at least for a time. More mercifully disposed than they oftentimes are, and knowing that he was too weak for flight, they left him unbound through the night, merely fastening a cord round each arm and securing the other end to the arm of a stout warrior, one of whom lay on each side of the prisoner.
Rupert had noted as they laid him down that no other white man was in sight; this gave him hope that the rest had escaped; yet he could not know that it was not by death, so that the discovery brought small relief to his anxiety of mind on their account.
Morning found him feverish and ill, his wounds very painful; but at an early hour the Indians resumed their line of march with him in the midst, strapped to the pony as before.
It was a terrible journey, climbing steep ascents, creeping along narrow ledges of rock, where a single false step would have sent them down hundreds of feet, to be dashed in pieces upon the sharp points of the rocks below; now descending by paths as steep, narrow, and dangerous as those by which they had ascended, and anon fording streams so deep and swift that the helpless, hapless prisoner was in imminent danger of drowning.
He, poor fellow, was too ill to note the direction in which they were travelling, though he had a vague idea that it was in the main south-westerly.
Beside the difficulties and dangers of the way, he suffered intensely from the pain of his wounds, and often from intolerable thirst.
One day he woke as from a troubled sleep to find himself lying on a bearskin in an Indian wigwam, a young girl sitting beside him embroidering a moccasin.