“I’ll swear you shan’t,” said Dumont in English; for he knew what sort of mercy a trespassing Crow might expect from the Pawnees.
“Tell them we’ll fight them or we’ll buy the chap of them, which they like,” said Coke, when the position was explained to him.
A debate followed in which Paul showed himself a shrewd bargainer. He and Coke totted up their available assets, and eventually about a quarter of a pint of whisky, a penknife, a steel watch-chain, and 183 four or five shillings’ worth of small silver were offered as the Crow’s ransom, and accepted, much to the astonishment of Coke, who, in his innocence, had been about to add a valuable ring and a pair of pocket-pistols to the purchase-money. He stooped and cut the prisoner’s bonds, and that worthy, in obedience to a threatening hint from Dumont, fled into the darkness.
The Indians were amicably inclined, and not only shared their supper of broiled deer’s meat with the travellers, but agreed to call for them at the camp in the morning and lead them to a point where the waggons could easily be drawn up to the higher platform; and on this good understanding the young men rode away. The new guides were as good as their word, and appeared on their little mustangs before Coke’s party had finished breakfast. They appeared to be one of several small scouting parties sent out from a main camp farther on to gather intelligence as to a reported advance of the Crow Indians against them; and were now returning to their head-quarters beyond the Platte River. Instructed by them, the sportsmen moved along the bluff to a place about three miles farther than Coke had ridden on the previous afternoon; and there found a tolerably easy incline, up which the waggons were soon dragged.
By the side of the first of the hills seen the day before, the noonday halt was made. The Pawnees still continued very friendly, the more so on discovering that nothing but the desire to do battle with bisons and grisly bears had brought the pale-faces so far.
“To-morrow we will show you many bisons,” they said; and they certainly kept their promise.
All that afternoon the sportsmen could trace the steady passage north-westwards of herd after herd of the animals; at that distance merely a brown, moving blur; and Coke wondered how the Indians ever proposed to come up with them.
“They will go no farther than the river,” said the Pawnees, when questioned.
On the afternoon of the next day, as the little procession came near to another of the mound-like hills, the guides called a halt.