“Waugh! I’ll take a look round,” he said, “and see what’s ter be seen, and mebbe diskiver what’s best ter be did. I’m lookin’ fer Buffler now ever’ minute. Ef he don’t come, then we’ll move on down ther stream, and try ter hit his trail and foller it.”
He rode away in the gray dawn on Nebuchadnezzar, promising to be back soon.
“I ain’t got no use fer Injuns no more’n they have,” was his thought, “and I’m agreein’ with ’em that ther only good Injun is a dead Injun; but, jes’ ther same, I knows thet Buffler would git hotter’n a limekiln ef I should let them wild men charge ther Blackfeet, as they want ter do. Ef Buffler’s fell inter ther hands of ther cusses, why, then thet’s diff’runt; thet puts ther responsibility and their commandin’ onter me. I reckons ef thet has happened, we’ll be obleeged ter charge ther reds, and wipe ’em out, ’specially if they’ve done any wickedness ter Buffler.”
He passed on down the cañon trail a long distance, looking carefully about, and searching for “sign.”
He saw pony hoofs and moccasin tracks, but they had been made early the day before, he judged, which indicated that the men and horses that had made them were not near.
Yet old Nomad was mistaking and underrating Blackfoot cunning in that; for, as he passed on, scanning the ground and glancing his keen, old eyes along the hills, a number of Blackfeet were watching him.
They were under the leadership of Crazy Snake, as cunning a rascal as had ever crept, serpentlike, through the defiles of those hills.
There was nothing crazy about old Crazy Snake but his name. He was shrewd, cunning, remarkably clear-headed for an Indian, and, altogether, a dangerous redskin. The name had been given him because of his ferocity in a certain battle, when, surrounded by an attacking party of Cree Indians, he had fought his way through and escaped, after killing and wounding many of them; he had fought as if he were a crazy snake, and that was his name ever after.
Crazy Snake was now just back from the trip he had made a number of miles to the northward, having made a headlong ride for the purpose of getting help from the Blackfoot village that lay at the big sink of the Powder River. He had secured the warriors he had gone for, and they were with him, and he was now on his way to the lower village—his own village—where he meant to make a mighty resistance, if the white men came there to attack him.
When he saw, in the trail below, the old trapper jogging along on his old horse, Nebuchadnezzar, he knew from Nomad’s manner that he was searching for some trail, or for Indian “sign.”