ight try it sometime."

Stanley, after a few days, started up the river with Scott and
Dancing, leaving his men in camp. Bucks, who was still too stiff to
ride, likewise remained to receive any messages that might come.

There was an abundance of water-fowl in the sloughs and ponds up and
down the river, and Bucks, the morning after Stanley's departure,
leaving the troopers lounging in camp, started out with a shot-gun to
look for ducks. He passed the first bend up-stream, and working his
way toward a small pond thickly fringed with alders, where he had
often seen teal and mallards, attempted to crawl within gunshot of
it.

He was working his way in this fashion toward the edge of the water
when he heard a clatter of wings and the next moment a flock of
mallards rushed in swift flight over his head. He impulsively threw up
his gun to fire but some instinct checked him. He was in a country of
dangerous enemies and the thought of bears still loomed large in his
mind. An instant's reflection convinced him that it was not his
movement that had frightened the ducks, and he was enough of a hunter
to look further than that for the cause. As caution seemed, from the
soreness of his legs and arms, plainly indicated, he lay still to
await developments.

Soon he heard a movement of trampling feet, and, seemingly, across the
pond from him. Bucks thought of buffaloes. His heart beat fast at the
thought of getting a shot at one until he reflected that he had no
rifle. The next instant his heart stopped beating. Not ten feet from
where he lay in the thick willows, an Indian carrying a rifle, and in
war-paint, stole noiselessly along toward the camp. No sooner had he
disappeared than a second brave followed, and while Bucks was
digesting this fright a third warrior, creeping in the same stealthy
manner and almost without a sound, passed the staring boy; the
appearance of a fourth and a fifth raised the hair on Bucks's head
till he was almost stunned with fright, but he had still to count
three more in the party, one more ferocious-looking than another,
before all had passed.

What to do was the question that forced itself on him. He feared the
Indians would attack the troopers in camp, and this he felt would be a
massacre, since the men, not suspecting danger, would be taken wholly
unawares. Should he fire his gun as a signal? It would probably bring
the Indians back upon him, but the thought of allowing the troopers to
be butch