“But the sun is only setting, and these Indians never get tired, so what makes you think they will halt?” Roger asked, himself very weary.
“But Lascelles is not anxious to keep going when there is no need,” explained the other prisoner. “I saw him point out a spot to the tall Indian at his side, who must be a sub-chief from the feathers in his scalp-lock, and the bears’ claws he carries about his neck. The Indian shook his head, and pointed ahead, as if he meant that he knew of a much better place to spend the night.”
“I hope there’s a bubbling spring there, and that it’s ice-cold,” ventured Roger, “for I’m dry as a bone, and somehow most of the water up here is luke-warm, when it isn’t nearly boiling.”
“There was that one place we struck,” Dick remarked, “where a cold stream ran so close to one of the hot pools that I really believe you could catch a trout in the one, give it a swing over your head, and drop it in the other so it would be cooked without being taken off the hook.”
“I can see what the folks at home will do and say when you tell that yarn,” observed Roger, with a faint chuckle, as though for the moment he had forgotten their predicament.
“Look, there are three other Indians waiting for us by that dead tree!” Dick suddenly exclaimed.
“One of them is wounded in the shoulder, too!” remarked Roger. “Oh! Dick, can those be the men who pursued Mayhew?”
“I was just thinking about that myself,” returned the other; “and, now that you ask me, I must say I believe they are. That one certainly has been struck by a bullet. See how crudely they have bandaged the wound. If they would let me try my hand I could do a heap better.”
“Suppose you tell that to Lascelles,” suggested Roger, quickly. “It might make us friends among the Indians, and goodness knows we need them. Besides, I never liked to see even an Indian suffer.”