fact, and then he
continued his conversation with Hay-uta.

Jack Carleton recalled that when he and Deerfoot were guessing the fate
of Otto, the suggestion was made that probably such had been the
experience of the poor fellow. He had been bartered to a party of red
men, who had gone westward with him, and beyond that important fact
nothing whatever was known.

My reader will remember also that I spoke in "Campfire and Wigwam," of
the strange Indians who were sometimes met by the hunters and trappers,
and well as by the red men themselves. They were dusky explorers, as
they may be termed, who like Columbus of the olden time, had the daring
to pass beyond the boundaries of their own land, and grope through
strange countries they had never seen.

The four warriors had come from some point to the west, and Hay-uta said
they could not speak a word which the Sauks understood, nor could the
Sauks utter any thing that was clear to them. But the sign-language
never fails, and had the strangers chosen, they could have given a great
deal of information to the Sauks.

A little reflection will show how limitless was the field of speculation
that was opened by this news. Beyond the bare fact, as I have said, that
the custodians of Otto Relstaub came from and went toward the west,
little, if any thing, was known. Their hunting grounds may have been not
far away on the confines of the present state of Kansas or the Indian
Nation, or traversing those hundreds of miles of territory, they may
have built their tepees around the headwaters of the Arkansas, in
Colorado (as now called), New Mexico or the Llano Estacado of Texas. It
was not to be supposed that they had come from any point beyond, since
that would have required the passage of the Rocky Mountains--a feat
doubtless often performed by red men, before the American Pathfinder led
his little band across that formidable barrier, but the theory that
Otto's new masters traveled from beyond, was too unreasonable to be
accepted.

Yet from the little camp where the three persons were lounging, it was
more than half a thousand miles to the Rocky Mountains, while the
territory stretched far to the north and south, so that an army might
lose itself beyond recovery in the vast wilderness.

The task, therefore, which faced them at the beginning was to learn
whither the four warriors had gone with the hapless Otto.

It need not be said that none understood this necessity better than
D