ween Dick and me. I sprang towards
our rifles, one of which Dick was in the act of grasping, to have a
fight for life, when a savage knocking it out of his hand three others
sprang upon him. The remainder throwing themselves upon me, we were in
an instant prisoners. I fully expected the next moment to have my scalp
taken off my head, and it was some satisfaction to find that it was
allowed to remain on.

"I hope the other fellows have escaped," said Dick; "we might, by giving
a shout, warn them of their danger; and if Pierre joins them, they might
manage to get hold of some of the horses."

As he spoke, he shouted at the top of his voice, and I joined him,
crying out--

"Keep away from the camp!"

No reply came. The Indians, instead of trying to stop us, only laughed;
and, from the voices we heard around, we knew there must be many more of
them.

Having bound our arms behind us, our captors sat themselves down to
examine and consume the food we had provided for the rest of the party,
and then proceeded to inspect the contents of our packs. While they
were thus employed, a shout was raised, and shortly after another, when
several Indians appeared, dragging Armitage and Jack along with them.

Still Pierre was at liberty; and we hoped that he might escape and give
notice of our fate, or form some plan for our liberation. Great,
therefore, was our disappointment when he too, shortly afterwards, was
brought into camp. What had become of our Indians we could not tell.
They had, we concluded, however, either been captured or deserted us.

Our captors, after a long consultation, carried us all a short distance
from the camp to a clump of trees, to the trunks of which they bound us
in a way which made it impossible to move either our arms or legs, when,
having thus tied us up, they returned to our camp to examine and divide
the spoil.

"We are in a bad case, I am afraid," said Armitage; "the savages have
proved themselves more cunning than I had supposed, for they were upon
Jack and me before we had time to lift our rifles to our shoulders."

"We might try to bribe them to let us off," I observed.

"Very little chance of their doing that; they'll help themselves to
everything we possess, and won't trust to our promises," said Jack.

"They have the ugly custom of torturing prisoners before they kill
them," said Dick. "I'm very glad Charley escaped our fate, poor fellow
provided he hasn't met with a worse one.