Accordingly they lay perfectly still until the last of the Indians had disappeared in the distance. Even then Dick would not start to leave their hiding place until absolutely sure no others were coming along the trail.
Unable to longer restrain the overpowering curiosity that gripped him, Roger presently put the question that was burning on his tongue.
“What was it happened to make them pass by, and not start up here to see how that stone started to roll down?” he asked.
“Then you didn’t see the jack-rabbit, Roger?”
“A rabbit, you say, Dick?”
“Yes. It was the most fortunate thing that could have happened for us, and we ought to be thankful to the little beast that he took it in his head to skip out when that stone jumped through the patch of dead grass where he was hiding.”
“Oh! was that what happened?” exclaimed the other boy, chuckling now because of the lucky event. “And, of course, when the Indians saw the rabbit running off, they believed it had started the stone to falling. It sometimes seems to me as if we were guarded by some invisible power, we have so many wonderful escapes!”
“It may be that we are, Roger, because we know that not a day passes but that our mothers, far away down the Missouri, are praying that we may be spared to come back to them. But, now that the coast is clear, let us head once more for Fort Mandan, as we call our camp.”
Of course both these wide-awake lads knew how to find their way through the densest woods, or over unknown ground, by using their knowledge of woodcraft to tell them the cardinal points of the compass.