and
what we meant to do. Tell you what, my boy, if you're to meet many
redskins you've got to learn sign language. It beats words all holler."

"Well, I did see his hands and yours a-going."

"Yes, and his face and mine too, and elbows and legs. It's as easy as
fallin' off a log when you once get the hang of it."

"What do you think we had better do after that?" asked Judge Parks.

"Read our own signs. Push on for water till we get some. It can't be
more'n one day, now. I know just about where I am. Risk my life on it."

So they went forward, but that night had to be taken for rest and the
morning found men and horses in a terrible plight. Not one drop of
water had they left, and all they had been able to do for the horses and
mules had been to sponge their parched mouths. They had camped near some
trees and bushes, as usual, and it was just about daylight that Yellow
Pine came to wake up his employer.

"Look a' here, jedge. I was too much played out to find it last night,
but here it is. Come."

"Well, what is it?" asked the judge, a moment later.

Yellow Pine was pointing at a broad, deeply trodden, flinty looking rut
in the surface of the prairie.

"That's the old bufler path I follered last year, when I went into the
mountains, or I'm the worst sold man you ever saw. It led me jest to
where we all want to go, 'zackly as I told you."

"We'd better hitch up and follow it now, then."

"We had. It'll take us west on a bee-line, and it'll go to all the
chances for water there are."

The buffaloes could safely be trusted for that, and before the sun was
up the mining party was following the very path which had led the big
game within reach of Two Arrows and One-eye. It was less than two hours
afterwards, without anybody to carry a report of it to anybody else,
that the whole Nez Perce camp disappeared, and all its human occupants
also took the advice of the buffaloes. It was necessary to carry all the
meat they had, and all the pappooses, and a number of other things, and
so it had not been possible to take all the lodges with their
lodge-poles. Two of the smaller and lighter found bearers, but there
were not squaws enough for the rest, and a sort of hiding-place was made
for them among the rocks until they could be sent for. Indians on a
journey load their ponies first, then their squaws, then the boys, but
never a "brave" unless it is a matter of life and death. A warrior would
as soon work for a living as