"Wouldn't I just!" Rube answered. "But you'll come, too, won't you?"
"Oh, yes," Kiddie agreed.
Rube was so hungry after his long fast that he considered the Indian food quite delicious, and he ate heartily.
After the meal he wandered out of the lodge; but there was little for him to see except the dark shapes of the wigwams and here and there a group of silent Indians seated round their camp fire; and so he returned and took comfortable refuge between the blankets and buffalo robes provided for him by one of Simon Sprott's attendant braves.
Before he fell asleep, however, he listened to the conversation between Kiddie and their host.
"He's got spies everywhere," Simon was saying. "Yes, even among the trappers, even working among the cowboys on the ranches. Many of the cowboys themselves are in his pay, stealing horses for him from the outlying corrals, or smuggling firearms into his reservation. For, as a rule, he gets others to do his dirty work for him. Naturally, we've got scouts as well as he, and we're not ignorant of his strength or his intentions."
Rube knew by now that it was of Broken Feather that they were speaking.
"If all I've heard of him is true," said Kiddie, "he has as strong a following as any chief within a week's ride. As for his intentions, I don't pretend to have any special knowledge, excepting that he's a man who thinks a tremendous lot of himself and has the ambition to be a great military genius like Sitting Bull or Red Cloud."
"That's just the point," resumed Simon Sprott. "And to achieve his ambition, he's aiming at conquering the smaller tribes, one by one—Crows, Blackfeet, Arapahoes, Pawnees. But the Crows first of all. Any day he may lead his army on the war trail against us, here in the Falling Water Reserve."
"If you're certain of that, why not be the first to attack?" suggested Kiddie. "You could take him by surprise."