“So here is where they were beginning a Fourth-of-July celebration,” thought Hickok. “Very good; we’ll slip down that way and see what they’ve got besides fireworks. Mayhap they’d enjoy some firecrackers and a little parade.”
Hickok approached the encampment with exceeding caution. He wished to locate the ponies of the warriors, for he had no doubt it was a war party, to see if his horse and that of Buffalo Bill had arrived.
He made an entire circuit of the camp, so near that he could hear the sentries greet each other in low, guttural phrases.
Again he began the circuit, this time within the circle of the guard. On his previous trip around the camp he had crossed a small stream. When he came to it again he turned down its bank and approached within three rods of the nearest fire. There he saw a dozen warriors sleeping in their blankets and one sitting with crossed legs, smoking and staring into the embers.
Hickok crept noiselessly past the fire, and followed the stream. It was as he had hoped—below the camp on the little stream were the horses. They had grazed along the bank, and now were huddled together in groups of three or four with crossed necks and heels outward, a trait which seems to have been handed down from the days when the wild mustangs thus grouped themselves for defense against the snapping wolves that came to pull them down.
Hickok carefully worked among the ponies, but found no trace of the animals belonging to himself and Cody. He successfully passed the sentry, and once more found himself on the open prairie.
He decided, as it must be well along past midnight, to seek some good hiding place before dawn, and there remain during the coming day. He had food, and water was at hand. He thought the stream might furnish dense thickets farther down, and so followed it, coming to a sharp turn where the brook tumbled over the rocks to become part of a river twenty feet below.
Hickok thought he had come to the Big Horn, but later learned it to be only a good-sized tributary of that wildly picturesque river.
On the bank near the junction the plainsman entered a dense motte of small timber. He knew he was well beyond sound of the Indian camp, and was screened from view by the sharp hill he had descended. So he started a little fire, and made a dipper of strong tea. By the light of the fire he prepared a hiding place by weaving the willow sprouts and sage brush into the thick growth about a spot he had selected for the purpose. He looked carefully about for signs of snakes among the rocks, but found none.
His nest ready for the coming day, the Laramie man ate heartily, smoked a pipeful of tobacco, and lay down to rest just as the first streaks of dawn began to show in the east.