escape_.


Dick Varley sat before the fire ruminating. We do not mean to assert
that Dick had been previously eating grass. By no means. For several
days past he had been mentally subsisting on the remarkable things
that he heard and saw in the Pawnee village, and wondering how he was
to get away without being scalped. He was now chewing the cud of this
intellectual fare. We therefore repeat emphatically--in case any
reader should have presumed to contradict us--that Dick Varley sat
before the fire _ruminating_!

Joe Blunt likewise sat by the fire along with him, ruminating too, and
smoking besides. Henri also sat there smoking, and looking a little
the worse of his late supper.

"I don't like the look o' things," said Joe, blowing a whiff of smoke
slowly from his lips, and watching it as it ascended into the still
air. "That blackguard Mahtawa is determined not to let us off till
he gits all our goods; an' if he gits them, he may as well take our
scalps too, for we would come poor speed in the prairies without guns,
horses, or goods."

Dick looked at his friend with an expression of concern. "What's to be
done?" said he.


"Ve must escape," answered Henri; but his tone was not a hopeful one,
for he knew the danger of their position better than Dick.