“I wasn't mistaken!” Midnight Jack murmured, looking after the retreating figure. “It's only a question of time. One of us will have to kill the other some day. Now, Tanglefoot, look out for number one.”
“The boy! I had almost forgotten him. I wonder if he understood my words? Tanglefoot intends to serve him like the wolf serves the fawn. When did that villain spare a captive?”
Rube Rattler stood before him, and the next instant the two friends met again.
The fearless adventurers walked silently to their lodge and entered.
There, standing in the gloom, they talked in low whispers.
Rube had made an important discovery. The dead Indian had been Dora's captor; this he had learned by following the three young bucks from the square, but beyond this he had not been able to proceed far.
“Every soul in an Indian town must be present at a sun-dance—captives and all?” said Midnight Jack. “So in all probability we shall have to go through it. But there is one who won't trouble us.”
“Yes, I know him; he keeps his word inviolate. We have but Tanglefoot to deal with.”
“And now I'd rather harbour the thought of facing twenty Sioux than him to-morrow.”
“I'm not goin' to cross the river till I come to it,” said Rube, with a smile, which his companion could not see.
A minute later the two friends had fallen back upon their scanty pallets, and soon nothing but the regular breathing of the sleepers was heard in the gloom.
They did not see the burly figure that crawled from the rear of their lodge, and some distance away rose erect like a man.
It walked hurriedly through one of the narrow Indian streets, and entered a commodious lodge, which bore a resemblance to the tepees of the chiefs.
“Boy!” said the man, in a low tone. “Gopher Gid, are ye still with me?”
“Yes,” came a boyish voice from the darkest corner of the tepee.
“Two Injuns fell afoul o' each other—that was all; and one got a knife in his heart;” laughed the burly man. “You will see more than a sun-dance to-morrow, boy.”
If Tanglefoot could have seen the expression that came to the little trapper's face as he uttered the last sentence, his snaky eyes would have shone with unwonted light.
“More than the sun-dance?” muttered the boy. “What can he mean?”