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 picketing 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 dey 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 magic, four Indians were seen
on the