Roger, always more careless than Dick, snapped his pistol in vain, for there was no report. Perhaps it was just as well, since, in the end, one enemy more or less would have made very little difference.
By this time the Indians were upon them, and each one of the little party found himself in the midst of a whirling force that frustrated all their wild efforts to strike with knife or hatchet.
From a point close at hand a shrill voice was screaming orders in the Indian tongue. François had come to life suddenly, after making sure that the whites could no longer cover him with their fire-arms. He was ordering his red minions not to finish the three palefaces, if they expected to obtain the reward he had promised them.
All this the boys heard as in a dream. They were so furiously engaged at the time, it was little attention they paid to anything that was going on. To avoid the savage blows aimed at them by dusky hands that gripped stone tomahawks, was about as much as they could manage. It was only later on, when they had a chance to exchange views concerning the fight, that they reached such a conclusion.
Such an unequal contest could not last long. Dick and Roger were pulled to the ground by the many hands that gripped them. Struggling to the bitter end, they expected that some one of their red antagonists would finish them with a fell sweep of those flourished tomahawks; indeed, Dick shut his eyes in anticipation of such a tragedy, and before his inward vision there flashed one glimpse of the dear ones in the far distant home on the bank of the Missouri.
But the blow did not fall. He could hear the excited voice of Lascelles haranguing the braves, and, opening his eyes again, Dick found that the French trader had interposed his arm between the threatening weapons and the two boys.
Just what François was saying to his allies Dick could not tell, since he knew little of Indian talk, and nothing at all of the Blackfoot language. He could, of course, guess that Lascelles, for some reason of his own, did not wish the boys slain. It could hardly have been pity that influenced the trader, for he was a cruel man.
Dick became aware of several other things just then. One was that Roger was keeping up his vain struggling, despite the fact that a couple of brawny braves were sitting on him.
“Keep still, Roger,” commanded Dick, realizing that the impulsive lad was imperiling both of their lives by his senseless actions; “you can never break away, and by keeping up that fighting you may force them to knock us on the head. We are prisoners, and there is no help for it.”
Roger stopped his writhing and beating with his fists, though the fact that he had to yield to the inevitable forced a groan from his lips.