"Non!" grunted Frank, and leaping off, he caught up and handed to me a tent pin. "Pawnee? non! Stick no grow in Pawnee hunting-ground. White man's knife cut him. Voilà!"
"White man!" I repeated in amazement.
How was it possible that there could have been so large a party of white men traversing this remote wilderness? As I sat staring at the wooden pin, studying its grain and shape, Frank circled around through the beaten grass in search of further signs. A guttural cry from him compelled my attention.
He was holding up a broken spur.
"España!" he called.
One glance was enough to convince me that he was not mistaken. The spur was of Spanish make.
More puzzled than ever, we clapped heels to our horses, and galloped up the track, which Frank declared led direct from the village. Within a few minutes we topped a line of high hills, and found ourselves looking down into the valley of the Republican and upon the rounded roofs of the big Pawnee lodges.
One look was enough to relieve our fears regarding the safety of the village. I had never seen a more peaceful-appearing Indian town. The women were at work dressing buffalo robes near the lodges or harvesting their corn and pumpkins in the little patches of field near-by. The children were scattered far and wide, the girls playing with their puppies or tagging their mothers, the boys practising with bows and arrows or watching the hoop-and-pole games of the few men who were to be seen. The young warriors, probably, were off on hunting or war parties, and of the men who remained in the village, most were dozing in their lodges or lolling in the shade outside.
But I did not look long at the savages. My eye was almost immediately caught by a red-and-yellow flag afloat above the front of the great council-lodge. Even at that distance I could not fail to recognize it as the flag of Spain. So astonished was I at the sight that I drew up short, unable to credit my eyes. The flag solved the mystery of the track, only to raise the puzzling question of the presence of so large a body of Spaniards at so great a distance from their present boundaries.
A loud shouting and commotion in the village roused me from my bewilderment. We had been sighted. The women and children were fleeing to the lodges, and all the men capable of bearing arms were advancing toward us, with threatening guns and bows and lances. However, Frank at once made the wolf-ear sign which showed them that he was a Pawnee, while I held up the wampum belt intrusted to me by Pike. A moment later Frank was recognized, and the news shouted back to the village.