“What will be the next movement do you suppose?” asked an emigrant.
“Wal, I ’spect they’ll kinder hem us in here, an’ try an’ starve us out,” said Abe.
“They can’t do that,” cried Grierson, “we have plenty of provisions.”
“For us, yes,” answered the “Crow-Killer,” “but for the cattle, no. The four-footed beasts will want fodder, an’ if we drive ’em outside our wagon-line, we’ve got to fight for it.”
“Then how to feed the cattle is the question,” said Grierson.
“That’s so, an’ that’s jist what the red skunks are cal’lating on. If they’d only stampeded our beasts last night, they’d had us.”
“That was the reason that you had ’em tied so securely,” broke in an emigrant.
“Sart’in; now you’re talkin’. We’ve got to stand a siege here, I reckon,” said Abe.
The gray streaks of the coming day were now seen in the eastern clouds, and the dense gloom vanished rapidly from the face of the prairie.
Abe divided the camp into watches, as before, attended in person to the wounded men, and imposed watchfulness upon the guards.
As the morning advanced, the emigrants looked out with anxious eyes for traces of the foe.
Far beyond rifle-range on the prairie, the Crows had formed a cordon of men around the camp of the emigrants, so as to cut off all hope of escape.
Abe looked at them with an evil expression in his dark eyes.
“If I don’t wipe out some of your big chiefs afore I’m a day older, then I’m a sucker,” and he shook his fist savagely toward the foe.
Abe then directed the breakfast to be prepared.
“We can’t fight unless we eat, and thank gracious, we’ve got enough for the humans if we haven’t for the beasts.”
So the women went busily to work getting the breakfast. Then, for the first time, the absence of Leona was discovered. Of course, Mrs. Grierson and Eunice had noticed her absence from the wagon, but thought she had taken refuge in some other one, but now it was discovered that she was not in the camp!
Abe, in his cool way, inquired all the particulars of the affair. Eunice, awake when Leona had left the wagon, of course knew that she had left it with the elder Hickman, for the purpose of seeing Dave. Inquiry was then made for Hickman, and he was announced as among the missing. Dick, the son, was questioned, but he professed ignorance of his father’s fate. Leona and his father both dead, he was the sole heir to Rattlesnake Gulch; so he determined to hold his tongue, and thus avoid unpleasant questions.