Part 2 (2/2)

”This doesn't appear so hopeful to me as it did last night, when we sat around the fire and talked it over; but of course we won't give up so long as there's the least hope.”

”And it won't do for me to give him up then,” replied Otto, with a meaning shake of his head; ”you don't know my fader as well as me.”

”I don't want to either,” remarked Jack, who did not think it his duty to refrain from showing the contempt he felt for the miserly, cruel parent of his friend.

”No,” observed Otto, with a touch of that grim humor which he sometimes displayed, ”I doesn't d.i.n.ks dot you and him could have much fun together.”

The young friends were too accustomed to the immensity of nature, as displayed on every hand, to feel specially impressed by the scene which would have held any one else enthralled. It may be said they were ”on business,” though it had very much the appearance of sport.

”Halloo! I expected it!” called out Jack Carleton, whose gaze abruptly rested on a point due southwest, and more than a mile away.

His companion did not need the guidance of the outstretched arm and index finger leveled toward the distant spot, where the smoke of a camp-fire was seen climbing toward the blue sky. The scene on which the boys looked was similar to that which met the eye of Ned Preston and Deerfoot when they lay on the broad flat rock and gazed across at the signal-fire in the distance.

The wooded country gradually sloped to the south and west from the elevation whereon the young friends had halted, slowly rising and undulating until the eye could follow the blue wavy outlines no further.

At the point already named, and in the lowest portion of the intervening country, a camp-fire was burning. The smoke, as it filtered upward through the branches of the trees, and gradually dissolved in the pure air above, was seen with such distinctness that it caught the eye of Jack the moment it was turned in that direction.

It was not a signal-fire, such as one is likely to detect when journeying through an Indian country, but the vapor from the camp of some body of men who were not making the slightest attempt to conceal themselves, for it cannot be conceived that they had any reason for doing so.

If the party were Indians, they surely had no necessity for stationing a sentinel on the outskirts of their camp to watch for danger.

Jack and Otto looked in each other's faces and smiled; the natural question had presented itself at the same moment. It was, ”Can it be that the horse we are seeking is with them?”

”The only way to find out is to go forward and see for ourselves,” said Jack, after they had discussed the question for several minutes.

”'Spose dot de horse is with them--what den?”

Jack shrugged his shoulders.

”Deerfoot used to say that he could never answer such a question until he knew exactly how everything stood. Now, we can't be certain whether they are Indians or white men, and I don't know as it makes much difference one way or the other, for our own horse thieves over in Kentucky were dreaded as much as were the Shawanoes. They were a good deal meaner, too, for they oppressed their own race.”

”Dot is vot I sometimes d.i.n.ks of fader,” was the unexpected remark of Otto; ”if he was only a colored man or Injin I would have more respect for him; dot is so.”

”Come on; we have started out to do something, and we can't gain anything by staying here.”

The brief halt had refreshed the boys, and they now moved forward with their naturally vigorous and almost bounding steps. While they had much curiosity, and a somewhat singular misgiving, yet they were in no particular fear, for it was impossible to believe they were in any real peril.

It was quite a tramp to reach the camp in which just then they felt so much interest, and the sun was close to meridian when Jack, who was slightly in advance, slackened his gait, and remarked in an undertone:

”It can't be far--halloo!”

While picking their way through the valley, they lost sight of the wavering column of vapor, except once or twice when they were able to catch a glimpse of it through the tree-tops. Jack's exclamation was caused by another sight of the murky column, which, as he suspected, proved to be little more than a hundred yards distant.

There was so much undergrowth that nothing of the fire itself could be observed, though the smoke showed itself distinctly in the clear air above.

”Vell, vot does we does now?” was the natural query of Otto, as he placed himself beside his young friend.

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