When they climbed a hill, and the scout leveled on the grassland his field glasses, the smoke and fire had attained such volume that the fugitives riding away before the flames were not visible to him.
Nor could he and Pawnee Bill detect any Indians out there, or in the hills adjacent.
“What’s the meaning of it, Cody?” Pawnee Bill asked.
The scout could not tell him. There were many ways in which such a fire might have started.
The thing was so suggestive, however, that the scouts hung about the edge of the grassland, close down by the river, a long time, looking for Blackfeet along the slopes of the hills.
At length they were astonished by seeing a young man come staggering out of the cañon and running toward them.
He had seen them, and was trying to reach them. As he drew nearer, they saw that his face and hands were blackened, as if by fire or smoke; and he not only staggered, but fell, as he came on.
“Blackfoot deviltry, I reckon!” said Pawnee Bill.
They ran to meet the young man.
Pawnee Bill now recognized him as the thoroughly reformed youth he had met in the town the day before, and with whom he had talked on the subject of a probable Blackfoot uprising.