nd
added the hungry sign by pressing in his stomach with the edges of the
hands, meaning "I am cut in two here." The Chief Indian offered him
a Deer-tongue, but did not take further interest. Yan received it
thankfully, made a hasty sketch of the camp, and returned to find Pete
much better, but thoroughly alarmed at being so long alone. He was
able and anxious now to go back. Yan led off, carrying all the things
of the outfit, and his comrade followed slowly and peevishly. When
they came to the river, Pete held back in fear, believing that the
loud noise they had heard was made by some monster of the deep, who
would seize them.

Yan was certain it could be only an explosion of swamp gas, and forced
Pete to swim across by setting the example. What the cause really was
they never learned.

They travelled very fast now for a time. Pete was helped by the
knowledge that he was really going home. A hasty lunch of Deer-tongue
delayed them but little. At three they sighted Caleb's smoke signal,
and at four they burst into camp with yells of triumph.

Caleb fired off his revolver, and Turk bayed his basso profundo
full-cry Fox salute. All the others had come back the night before.

Sam said he had "gone ten mile and never got a sight of that blamed
river." Guy swore they had gone forty miles, and didn't believe there
was any such river.

"What kind o' country did you see?"

"Nothin' but burned land and rocks."

"H-m, you went too far west--was runnin' parallel with Beaver River."

"Now, Blackhawk, give an account of yourself to Little Beaver," said
Woodpecker. "Did you two win out?"

"Well," replied the Boiler Chief, "if Hawkeye travelled forty miles,
we must have gone sixty. We pointed straight north for three hours and
never saw a thing but bogs and islands of burned timber--never a sign
of a plain or of Indians. I don't believe there are any."

"Did you see any sandhills?" asked Little Beaver.

"No."

"Then you didn't get within miles of it."

Now he told his own story, backed by Pete, and he was kind enough to
leave out all about Peetweet's whimpering. His comrade responded
to this by giving a glowing account of Yan's Woodcraft, especially
dwelling on the feat of the rubbing-stick fire in the rain, and when
they finished Caleb said:

"Yan, you won, and you more than won, for you found the green timber
you went after, you found the river Sam went after, an' the Injuns
Wesley went after. Sam and Wesley, hand