62 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



gloom of the thicket, near which the camp was fixed, with 

 rifles ready cocked, they waited a renewal of the attack. 

 Presently the leader of the band, no other than Killbuck, who 

 had so lately been recounting some of his experiences across 

 the plains, and than whom no more crafty woodsman or more 

 expert trapper ever tracked a deer or grained a beaver-skin, 

 raised his tall, leather-clad form, and placing his hand over 

 his mouth, made the prairie ring with the wild, protracted 

 note of an Indian war-whoop. This was instantly repeated 

 from the direction where the animals belonging to the camp 

 were grazing, under the charge of the horse-guard. Three 

 shrill whoops answered the warning of the leader, and showed 

 the guard was on the alert, and understood the signal. How- 

 ever, with the manifestation of their presence the Indians 

 appeared to be satisfied ; or, what is more probable, the act 

 of aggression had been committed by some daring young 

 warrior, who, being out on his first expedition, desired to 

 strike the first coup, and thus signalize himself at the outset 

 of the campaign. After waiting some few minutes, expecting 

 a renewal of the attack, the mountaineers in a body rose 

 from the ground and made toward the animals, with which 

 they presently returned to the camp ; and, after carefully 

 hobbling and securing them to pickets firmly driven into the 

 ground, mounting an additional guard, and examining the 

 neighboring thicket, they once more assembled round the 

 fire, relit their pipes, and puffed away the cheering weed as 

 composedly as if no such being as Redskins, thirsting for 

 their lives, was within a thousand miles of their perilous 

 encampment. 



"If ever thar was bad Injuns on these plains," at last 

 growled Killbuck, biting hard the pipe-stem between his teeth, 

 "it's these Rapahos, and the meanest kind at that." 



" Can't beat the Blackfeet, any how," chimed in La Bonte, 

 from the Yellow Stone country, a fine handsome specimen 

 of a mountaineer. " However, one of you quit this arrow 



