Perplexities—Our hunters plan their escape—Unexpected interruption—The tables turned—Crusoe mounts guard—The escape.
Dick Varley sat before the fire ruminating. We do not mean to assert that Dick had been previously eating grass. By no means. For several days past he had been mentally subsisting on the remarkable things that he heard and saw in the Pawnee village, and wondering how he was to get away without being scalped; he was now chewing the cud of this intellectual fare. We therefore repeat emphatically—in case any reader should have presumed to contradict us—that Dick Varley sat before the fire ruminating!
Joe Blunt likewise sat by the fire along with him, ruminating too, and smoking besides. Henri also sat there smoking, and looking a little the worse of his late supper.
“I don’t like the look o’ things,” said Joe, blowing a whiff of smoke slowly from his lips, and watching it as it ascended into the still air. “That blackguard Mahtawa is determined not to let us off till he gits all our goods, an’ if he gits them, he may as well take our scalps too, for we would come poor speed in the prairies without guns, horses, or goods.”
Dick looked at his friend with an expression of concern. “What’s to be done?” said he.
“Ve must escape,” answered Henri; but his tone was not a hopeful one, for he knew the danger of their position better than Dick.
“Ay, we must escape; at least we must try,” said Joe; “but I’ll make one more effort to smooth over San-it-sa-rish, an’ git him to snub that villain Mahtawa.”
Just as he spoke the villain in question entered the tent with a bold, haughty air, and sat down before the fire in sullen silence. For some minutes no one spoke, and Henri, who happened at the time to be examining the locks of Dick’s rifle, continued to inspect them with an appearance of careless indifference that he was far from feeling.
Now, this rifle of Dick’s had become a source of unceasing wonder to the Indians,—wonder which was greatly increased by the fact that no one could discharge it but himself. Dick had, during his short stay at the Pawnee village, amused himself and the savages by exhibiting his marvellous powers with the “silver rifle.” Since it had been won by him at the memorable match in the Mustang Valley, it had scarce ever been out of his hand, so that he had become decidedly the best shot in the settlement, could “bark” squirrels (that is, hit the bark of the branch on which a squirrel happened to be standing, and so kill it by the concussion alone), and could “drive the nail” every shot. The silver rifle, as we have said, became “great medicine” to the Red-men, when they saw it kill at a distance which the few wretched guns they had obtained from the fur-traders could not even send a spent ball to. The double shot, too, filled them with wonder and admiration; but that which they regarded with an almost supernatural feeling of curiosity was the percussion cap, which in Dick’s hands always exploded, but in theirs was utterly useless!
This result was simply owing to the fact, that Dick after firing handed the rifle to the Indians without renewing the cap. So that when they loaded and attempted to fire, of course it merely snapped. When he wished again to fire, he adroitly exchanged the old cap for a new one. He was immensely tickled by the solemn looks of the Indians at this most incomprehensible of all “medicines,” and kept them for some days in ignorance of the true cause, intending to reveal it before he left. But circumstances now arose which banished all trifling thoughts from his mind.