“I hope the other fellows have escaped,” said Dick; “we might, by giving a shout, warn them of their danger; and if Pierre joins them, they might manage to get hold of some of the horses.”
As he spoke, he shouted at the top of his voice, and I joined him, crying out—
“Keep away from the camp!”
No reply came. The Indians, instead of trying to stop us, only laughed; and, from the voices we heard around, we knew there must be many more of them.
Having bound our arms behind us, our captors sat themselves down to examine and consume the food we had provided for the rest of the party, and then proceeded to inspect the contents of our packs. While they were thus employed, a shout was raised, and shortly after another, when several Indians appeared, dragging Armitage and Jack along with them.
Still Pierre was at liberty; and we hoped that he might escape and give notice of our fate, or form some plan for our liberation. Great, therefore, was our disappointment when he too, shortly afterwards, was brought into camp. What had become of our Indians we could not tell. They had, we concluded, however, either been captured or deserted us.
Our captors, after a long consultation, carried us all a short distance from the camp to a clump of trees, to the trunks of which they bound us in a way which made it impossible to move either our arms or legs, when, having thus tied us up, they returned to our camp to examine and divide the spoil.
“We are in a bad case, I am afraid,” said Armitage; “the savages have proved themselves more cunning than I had supposed, for they were upon Jack and me before we had time to lift our rifles to our shoulders.”
“We might try to bribe them to let us off,” I observed.
“Very little chance of their doing that; they’ll help themselves to everything we possess, and won’t trust to our promises,” said Jack.