entirely on your experience, honest old man, to discover the means to
apprise our friends of their danger."

"There will be a real time of it," muttered the bee-hunter, laughing,
"if the boys get at work, in good earnest, with these red skins!"

He was interrupted by a general movement which took place among the
band. The Indians dismounted to a man, giving their horses in charge
to three or four of the party, who were also intrusted with the safe
keeping of the prisoners. They then formed themselves in a circle
around a warrior, who appeared to possess the chief authority; and at
a given signal the whole array moved slowly and cautiously from the
centre in straight and consequently in diverging lines. Most of their
dark forms were soon blended with the brown covering of the prairie;
though the captives, who watched the slightest movement of their
enemies with vigilant eyes, were now and then enabled to discern a
human figure, drawn against the horizon, as some one, more eager than
the rest, rose to his greatest height in order to extend the limits of
his view. But it was not long before even these fugitive glimpses of
the moving, and constantly increasing circle, were lost, and
uncertainty and conjecture were added to apprehension. In this manner
passed many anxious and weary minutes, during the close of which the
listeners expected at each moment to hear the whoop of the assailants
and the shrieks of the assailed, rising together on the stillness of
the night. But it would seem, that the search which was so evidently
making, was without a sufficient object; for at the expiration of half
an hour the different individuals of the band began to return singly,
gloomy and sullen, like men who were disappointed.

"Our time is at hand," observed the trapper, who noted the smallest