Buffalo Bill scrambled toward it, and soon had his hand on it.
“Yes, just as I thought,” he said, and he began to pull on the thing.
Soon it lengthened, and a sunken canoe rose into view. It had been sunk cleverly there by its Indian owner; and the painter of time-stained rawhide, twisted round the root in imitation of a vine, the Indian had felt sure could not be distinguished from an actual vine.
The canoe was drawn from the water, and the water poured out of it. Then the two friends entered it. Buffalo Bill took up the paddle that had been lashed to the canoe, and turned the bow down the stream.
They ran the rapids successfully.
Because of the speed with which the current hurried them on, and also because of the cleverness of Crazy Snake, they did not see where he had concealed and sunk the canoe in which he had gone down the stream; but swept on past it, and soon again were in rapids that bore them farther and farther from that spot.
Finally they abandoned the canoe, after sinking it and marking the place, and went along the banks of the cañon stream, trying to find the trail of Crazy Snake.
“He’s been too much for us,” the scout admitted, when, after long searching on either shore, and for a long distance up and down the river, they were still in the dark. “The rascal was Crazy Snake, I don’t doubt; and he’s one of the cleverest and least crazy of all the Blackfeet.”
As they continued this search, they saw black smoke roll up from the wide stretch of low grassland that fell away from the foot of the hills.
Trees and hills intervened to keep them from at once seeing the fire which gave birth to the smoke.