It was Midnight Jack who had come thus timely upon the scene, and the Sioux chief recognised him and made a singular motion with his left hand, which caused a halt.
“By the gold of Ophir!” was the response. “You don't mean it?”
The sign was repeated, and Gopher Gid stood amazed to see the two men shaking hands on the spot where he hoped to have seen Setting Sun fall in the agonies of death.
The chief and Midnight Jack drew aside, and left Gopher alone, but he saw Setting Sun's hand point to the south-east, and heard him say—
“She will be found there; that road is the broadest to her.”
Midnight Jack then approached the boy, and told him they had met a friend, and that he now knew the trail that would lead to his sister.
Armed with his favourite revolvers, which ingenuity had lately returned to him in the Sioux camp, he glided toward a rocky hill, and soon passed from Gopher Gid's vision. The sudden cracking of firearms roused his mettle, and snatching from his belt old Tanglefoot's pistol, which the road-agent had filled with loaded cartridges, our young white brave bounded forward to the assistance of his friend.
But Midnight Jack did not need help. He stood erect upon a boulder, pistol in each outstretched hand, fire in his eye, and below him the bodies of three Indians. Here Rube rode up, saying—
“We heard yer shots and hurried up. Yonder ar the hosses, but we hed a time. Thar war wolves around the corral, and Injuns, too.”
Rube was surprised to see Gopher, but led the couple to three strong-limbed horses, whose rope halters were held by a young Indian.