e the Indian. Scraping together the little of
the Indian language he knew, he stooped down, and, cutting the thongs
that bound him, said--"Go, white men love the Indians."

The man cast on his deliverer one glance of surprise, and the next
moment bounded aside into the bushes and was gone.

A loud shout from the party behind showed that this act had been
observed, and Crusoe stood with the end of the line in his mouth, and an
expression on his face that said, "You're absolutely incomprehensible,
Dick! It's all right, I _know_; but to my feeble capacity it _seems_
wrong."

"Fat for, you do dat?" shouted Pierre in a rage, as he came up with a
menacing look.

Dick confronted him. "The prisoner was mine. I had a right to do with
him as it liked me."

"True, true," cried several of the men who had begun to repent of their
resolution, and were glad the savage was off. "The lad's right. Get
along, Pierre."

"You had no right, you vas wrong. Oui, et I have goot vill to give you
one knock on de nose."

Dick looked Pierre in the face, as he said this, in a manner that cowed
him.

"It is time," he said quietly, pointing to the sun, "to go on. Your
bourgeois expects that time won't be wasted."

Pierre muttered something in an angry tone, and, wheeling round his
horse, dashed forward at full gallop followed by the rest of the men.

The trappers encamped that night on the edge of a wide grassy plain,
which offered such tempting food for the horses that Pierre resolved to
forego his usual cautious plan of picketting them close to the camp, and
set them loose on the plain, merely hobbling them to prevent their
straying far.

Dick remonstrated, but in vain. An insolent answer was all he got for
his pains. He determined, however, to keep Charlie close beside him all
night, and also made up his mind to keep a sharp look out on the other
horses.

At supper he again remonstrated.

"No fraid," said Pierre, whose pipe was beginning to improve his temper.
"The red reptiles no dare to come in open plain when de moon so clear."

"Dun know that," said a taciturn trapper, who seldom ventured a remark
of any kind; "them varmints 'ud steal the two eyes out o' you' head when
they set their hearts on't."

"Dat ar' umposs'ble, for de have no hearts," said a half-breed; "dey
have von hole vere de heart vas be."

This was received with a shout of laughter, in the midst of which an
appalling yell was heard, and, as if by ma