oe. Yonder's the squaw that owns
the half-drowned baby. Everything depends on her."

Dick pointed to the Indian woman as he spoke. She was sitting beside
her tent, and playing at her knee was the identical youngster who had
been saved by Crusoe.

"I'll manage it," said Joe, and walked towards her, while Dick and
Henri returned to the chief's tent.

"Does the Pawnee woman thank the Great Spirit that her child is
saved?" began Joe as he came up.

"She does," answered the woman, looking up at the hunter. "And her
heart is warm to the Pale-faces."

After a short silence Joe continued,--

"The Pawnee chiefs do not love the Pale-faces. Some of them hate
them."

"The Dark Flower knows it," answered the woman; "she is sorry. She
would help the Pale-faces if she could."

This was uttered in a low tone, and with a meaning glance of the eye.

Joe hesitated again--could he trust her? Yes; the feelings that filled
her breast and prompted her words were not those of the Indian just
now--they were those of a _mother_, whose gratitude was too full for
utterance.

"Will the Dark Flower," said Joe, catching the name she had given
herself, "help the Pale-face if he opens his heart to her? Will she
risk the anger of her nation?"

"She will," replied the woman; "she will do what she can."

Joe and his dark friend now dropped their high-sounding style of
speech, and spoke for some minutes rapidly in an undertone. It was
finally arranged that on a given day, at a certain hour, the woman
should take the four horses down the shores of the lake to its lower
end, as if she were going for firewood, there cross the creek at the
ford, and drive them to the willow bluff, and guard them till the
hunters should arrive.

Having settled this, Joe returned to the tent and informed his
comrades of his success.

During the next three days Joe kept the Indians in good-humour by
giving them one or two trinkets, and speaking in glowing terms of the
riches of the white men, and the readiness with which they would part
with them to the savages if they would only make peace.

Meanwhile, during the dark hours of each night, Dick managed to
abstract small quantities of goods from their pack, in room of which
he stuffed in pieces of leather to keep up the size and appearance.
The goods thus taken out he concealed about his person, and went off
with a careless swagger to the outskirts of the village, with Crusoe
at his heels. Arrived there, he ti