"Yes, I suppose we are; only if it proves to be a bear, I wonder who will rescue us?"
Alaric had already set off in the direction of the moaning; and ere they had taken half a dozen steps Bonny also heard it plainly. Then they paused and shouted, hoping that if the sound came from a bear the animal would run away. As they could hear no evidences of a retreat, and as the moaning still continued, they again pushed on. It was now so dark that they could do little more than feel their way past trees, over logs, and through dense beds of ferns. All the while the sound by which they were guided grew more and more distinct, until it seemed to come from their very feet.
At this moment the moaning ceased, as though the sufferer were listening. Then it was succeeded by a plaintive cry that went straight to Alaric's heart. He could dimly see the outline of a great log directly before him. Stooping beside it and groping among the ferns, his hands came in contact with something soft and warm that he lifted carefully. It was a little child, who uttered a sharp cry of mingled pain and terror at being thus picked up by a stranger.
"Poor little thing!" exclaimed the boy. "I am afraid it is badly injured, and shouldn't be one bit surprised if it had broken a limb. I must try and find out so as not to hurt it unnecessarily."
"Well," said Bonny, in a tragic tone, "they say troubles fly in flocks. I thought we were in a pretty bad fix before; but now we surely have run into difficulty. What ever are we to do with a baby?"
"Bonny!" cried Alaric, without answering this question, "I do believe it's the little Indian girl who drove away the dog, and something is the matter with one of her ankles."
"Skookum John's little Siwash kid!" exclaimed Bonny, joyfully. "Then we can't be so very far from his camp. Now if we only knew in which direction it lay."
As if in answer to this wish there came a cry, far-reaching and long drawn; "Nittitan! Nittitan! Ohee! Ohee!"
For several hours Skookum John and his eldest son, Bah-die, had been searching the woods for two white lads whom the third Lieutenant of the cutter claimed to have lost. He had promised the Indian a reward of twenty-five dollars if he would bring them to the cutter, and Skookum John had at once set forth with the idea of earning this money as speedily as possible.
Little Nittitan, his only daughter, whom he loved above all the others, noted his going, and after a while decided to follow him. When darkness put an end to the Indian's fruitless search and he returned to his camp, he found it in an uproar. Nittitan was missing, and no one could imagine what had become of her.