"Sandy:—Keep up a brave heart. We are going to get you out of there to-night. Trust Blue Jacket. He is true as steel. Bring gun.
"Bob."
Sandy smiled as he saw that reference to the old musket; and yet, after all, it was not so strange that cautious, wise Bob should remember how much of their anticipated pleasure in hunting during the months that were ahead would be taken away if Sandy were without a weapon.
He read the message aloud to his friend. Blue Jacket evidently saw nothing singular about that mention of a gun. He knew what it meant to be without the means of obtaining food in that great wilderness. What bow and arrows, a tomahawk, or a crude knife, meant to an Indian, a gun stood for in the eyes of a white man. And so Blue Jacket only nodded his head gravely as he listened, saying finally:
"Get gun all right. No fear. Much skins here. Swap with brave for gun. Go now."
He evidently believed in striking while the iron was hot, for, stooping down, he gathered in his arms several valuable skins, among them some beautiful otter pelts, and started out.
The squaw never raised a finger to interfere, yet she knew that Blue Jacket was very weak and sore from his tremendous exertions in trying to escape from the pursuing fire. And she was his mother, too. But then Sandy realized that Indian mothers differed in many respects from those of white boys. Blue Jacket, was he not a warrior now, and as such fully competent to decide for himself? The old squaw no doubt would have held her tongue had he declared it to be his intention to start back to the white settlement with Sandy, even though she knew it must be the means of bringing about his death.
Sure enough, Blue Jacket must have gauged well the temper of the brave who had obtained the old flintlock musket, and knew just how to wheedle him out of his recent prize, for, when the young Indian returned, he placed in Sandy's eager hands not only the gun, but all other things taken from the prisoner at the time he fell into the hands of the four Shawanee warriors—his powder horn, carved with considerable rude skill by Bob, the bullet pouch decorated with colored porcupine quills, his hatchet, knife, and even the little bag, in which Sandy was accustomed to keeping his flint and steel, some dry tinder for starting fires, and a few trifling odds and ends.
"Why, my brother!" cried the delighted white boy, "you are a bigger medicine man than the old fellow who danced, and shook those hollow gourds with the dried beans inside. Here are all my belongings, with not one thing missing. Oh! I tell you, it was a fine day I discovered you there in the grass, Blue Jacket. For you have returned what little we did a dozen fold!"
But evidently the young Indian had his own ideas about that, for he shook his head, and made a grimace. He would never forget how those boys had stood between when the irate settler, Anthony Brady, demanded his blood!