ed Tom.

"It's pretty plain they're going to cross the river, but, confound it,
how can we tell where it's going to be done? I've told you that the
bank gets so low, just yonder, that it won't hide us any longer."

"Who wants it to hide us? They intend to cross the river _here_, and in
about ten minutes, too. Just watch their actions, if you can do it
without showing your head."

The Indians stood together, conversing upon some point about which
there seemed a variance of opinion. Their deep, guttural, ejaculatory
words were plainly audible to the hunters, and their gleaming, bedaubed
visages were seen in all their hideous repulsiveness. They gesticulated
continually, pointing behind them in the direction of their trail, and
across the river, over the heads of the crouching Riflemen, who were
watching every motion. Nothing would have been easier for the latter
than to have sent four of these savages into eternity without a
moment's warning; yet, nothing was further from their intentions, for,
of all things, this would have been the surest to defeat their chief
object. The captive would have been brained the instant the savages saw
they could not hold her. The great point was to surprise them so
suddenly and completely as to prevent this.

From the present appearance of matters, this seemed not very difficult
of accomplishment, as it was a foregone conclusion upon the part of the
hunters that the savages would endeavor to ford the river at the point
where they lay in ambush for them. It only remained for the Riflemen to
bide their time, and, at the proper moment, rush upon and scatter them,
and rescue the captive from their hands.

"I wonder whether they're going to talk all day," remarked Tom,
impatiently, after they had conversed some twenty or thirty minutes.

"They're in a dispute about something. It won't take them long to get
through with it."

"How do you know that, I should like to know? Like enough they'll talk
till dark, and keep us waiting. Confound 'em, what's the use?"

No one ventured to reply to Tom's sulky observation, and, after several
impatient exclamations, he added:

"The longer they talk the louder they get, which is a sure sign the
dispute is getting hotter, which is another sign it'll be considerable
time before they get through."

"I am sure we can wait as long as they can," said Dick, mildly.

"My heavens! who said we couldn't? Just hear 'em jabber!"

The conversation of the Indian