"Two Arrows know him. Heap bad mule. Nez Percé lose all pony. Find 'em now. Red-head come?"
Sile looked with admiration upon the fiercely excited face of the young Nez Percé. The dark eyes fairly glittered with pleasure and expectation, and he was striving, with all the words and signs he was master of, to convey an idea of the loss his band had sustained, and now once more, and more sonorously, the "morning bugle" of a mule in command of something came ringing up the river.
"I'll string the trout," said Sile, as he began to do so, "then I'll go with you. It'll be grand if we can really catch them."
"Two Arrows catch 'em all, heap time. Get one, get all tribe."
"Wish we were mounted. Better go to camp and get some horses."
"Ugh! No wait. Find now."
There was no such thing as resisting his eager urgency, and Sile himself began to get excited. The trout made two magnificent "strings," but were pretty heavy to carry, and it was decided to hang them and the two rods upon the limb of a tree until a visit should have been paid to the owner of that bray. All this was quickly attended to, and then the two fishermen were instantly changed into pony-hunters.
Not even his adventure with the grisly, or his timely success with the two bisons when his people were starving, had so aroused the ambition of Two Arrows. The future fortunes of his entire band seemed to him to depend once more upon his own individual good-conduct. Sile thought he had never seen so proud looking a human being.
The speckled beauties from the river swung heavily from the high but bending branch as the two boys hurried away, but these were almost forgotten by both in the course of a few minutes. They did not have to follow far the windings of the stream before Two Arrows, who was somewhat in the advance, dodged behind a tree and beckoned eagerly to Sile:
"Ugh! Look! Pony!"