A friend in need

“Hum!” said Rob to himself, with an accent of deep conviction. “Evidently these chaps keep a closer watch on their prisoner than I had imagined. I guess I’d better retire to my boudoir again.”

The Indian sentinel lowered his rifle as the boy turned, and eyed him stoically without any more expression on his stolid features than would have shown on the features of a mask.

“All right,” Rob said to him, nodding cheerfully. “Don’t worry about me, old chap. I’m going to bed.”

If the Indian understood, he made no sign. Instead, he wheeled and solemnly followed the boy back to the tepee. Rob entered it and lay down. Presently, to his delight, some blankets were thrown in to him.

“Well, if I can’t eat I can sleep, anyhow,” he said philosophically, and in a few minutes he was curled up in the coverings and off as soundly as if he was slumbering in a cot at the ranch house.

It was dawn when Rob awoke, as he speedily became aware when the tent flap was thrown open, and he saw facing him a rather pretty young Indian girl who bore in her hand an earthenware dish.

“Hullo!” said Rob, sitting up in his blankets.

“Hullo,” rejoined the girl in a more friendly tone than Rob had yet heard in the Indian camp.

“Who are you?”

“My name Susyjan,” was the response, as the girl set down the steaming dish, in which, as a concession to Rob, an earthenware spoon had been placed.

“All right, Susyjan,” smiled Rob. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to eat.”

“All right, you go ahead,” acquiesced Susyjan, who, as Rob guessed, had been named after some white Susy Jane.

“You talk pretty good English, Susyjan,” remarked Rob, between mouthfuls of the contents of the dish, which had some sort of stew in it.

“Um! Me with Wild West show one time.”

“Is that so?” asked Rob, interested. “So you’ve been East?”

“Um! New York, Chicago, Bosstown, every place.”

“Maybe I’ve seen you in the show some place?”

“Maybe.”

“What did you like best in the East, Susyjan?” asked Rob, after a brief silence.

“Beads,” rejoined Susyjan, without an instant’s hesitation.

“Beans?” inquired Rob, puzzled. “Oh, in Boston, you mean?”

“No beans beads,” pouted the young squaw. “Ladies’ beads. Round neck savee?”

Rob nodded.

“Oh, yes, I savee, Susyjan. So you like beads, eh?”

“Plenty much,” rejoined Susyjan, nodding her smooth black head vigorously and showing her white, even teeth in two smiling rows.

A bold idea came into Rob’s head. Perhaps out of this young squaw’s vanity he might contrive a means to escape. But he would have to go to work gradually, or she might betray him, and that would result, as he knew, in closer captivity than ever for himself.

“What have they got me here for, Susyjan, you know?” he asked.

“Um-hum. Big Chief Spotted Snake him say bimeby get plenty much money for you. Have big dance.”

“Oh, that’s the game, is it?” mused Rob. “Holding me for ransom. In that case, then, no wonder they are guarding me closely.”

“Say, Susyjan,” broke out Rob presently, “how you like to have lots of beads fine ones, like white ladies wear?”

The Indian girl clapped her hands, which to any one familiar with these unemotional people indicated that she was hugely excited over the idea. Presently her face clouded over, however.

“How can?” she asked.

“Me give um you.”

“You?”

“Yes. I’ll give you the finest set of beads ever strung together, but you have got to do something for me.”

“What that?”

“Bring a pony round to the back of the tent to-night.”

The girl shook her head positively. But Rob saw that mingled with her refusal was an admixture of keen regrets for the loss of the promised beads. She knitted her brow in deep thought for a few seconds, and then sprang up, radiant once more.

“All right, white boy. Me get you pony. Charley One-Eyed Horse him very sick. I get you his pony.”

“All right, then, that’s settled,” said Rob cheerfully. “But how about you? Won’t you get into trouble over it? I don’t want that, you know.”

“Oh, no,” laughed the girl. “Charley One-Eyed Horse my uncle. Him very old man. Pony very old, too plenty mean. I break rope. Braves think pony bust ’em and get away.”

Although the ethics of this didn’t seem just straight to Rob, he was in no position to be very particular. More especially as the girl went on to tell him that the tribe expected to move on the next day, making for the valley in which the great snake dance was to be held. In the event of his being carried with them, Rob knew that his chances of escape would be problematical. If he was to make the attempt, he would have to carry it out as soon as possible.

How the rest of that day passed, the boy could never tell. The feigning of sleepy indifference to things about him cost him the hardest effort he had ever known. The hours seemed to drag by. It appeared as if night would never come.

Susyjan did not come near him again that day, and although he saw her moving about the camp at various times, she gave no sign of recognition. Once a dreadful thought flashed across Rob’s mind. What if the girl had been used as a spy, and had betrayed his secret. This put him into a fever, but he was, of course, powerless to resolve his doubts. Suspense was all that was left for him.

As evening closed in, the agony of waiting grew worse.

“Those fellows must have made up their minds to keep awake all night,” thought Rob, as hour after hour went by, and the Indians still sat, blanket-shrouded, by their fire, playing some sort of game with flat slabs of stone. Finally, however, even the most persistent players ceased and went to their tepees.

By the dying fire there now stood only two figures, tall, motionless and apparently wooden. But Rob knew that they were sentinels posted to watch the tepee in which he was confined. He knew, also, that even though they did seem unconscious of everything, their little black eyes were alert and awake to the slightest move on his part.

“I guess I’ll have to give it up for to-night,” thought Rob, casting himself down on his blankets. He felt more despondent than he had at any time since his capture. The camp was now as silent as a country graveyard. In the intense stillness he could even hear the occasional crackle of an ember falling to ashes.

Suddenly the boy started, and gazed, open-eyed, at the back curtain of his tepee.

Surely the flap had moved.

After a few seconds’ gazing there was no doubt of it. The flap slowly rose, and presently Susyjan’s flat-nosed countenance peered into the gloom of the shelter.

“Come, white boy,” she whispered. “Me got pony.”

“Blessings on your black, clayed head!” breathed Rob under his breath.

Silently as a stalking cat, he moved toward the back of the tent. In another moment he was out of it and under the starry canopy of the sky.

“Come,” whispered the young squaw, gliding like a snake into the dark fringe of forest behind the tepee. Rob followed as quietly as he could, but alas! he was not as expert as the girl. His foot struck a twig which snapped with a loud “crack!” under his tread.

Instantly the motionless Indians by the fire galvanized into life. They looked about them in a startled way, and for one dreadful moment Rob, crouching in the shadow and hardly daring to breathe, thought that they were about to examine his tepee. To his intense relief, however, they contented themselves with gazing about them, and seeing nothing unusual, resumed their statue-like vigil.

“White boy like lame cow. Plenty tumble,” snickered Susyjan, while Rob’s cheeks burned wrathfully. He took greater care from that time on, and managed to follow the noiselessly gliding girl without causing another alarm, while she led him in a circuitous route round the back of the encampment.

Suddenly they came to a hillside covered with wild oats, on which several dark objects that the boy made out to be ponies were hobbled. Deftly seizing one by the nose, the girl forced a rope “hackamore” she had brought with her into its mouth, and cast off its hobbles.

Rob, with one hand on the little animal’s rump, and the other on its withers, vaulted to the pony’s back in a second.

“Which way I go?” he whispered.

“Over there,” rejoined the girl, pointing to the eastward. “Bymby find trail.”

“All right, Susyjan; you’re a brick,” whispered Rob, “and I won’t forget the beads.”

“Real ones, like white lady,” insisted Susyjan.

“Sure, and the whitest of them isn’t any whiter than you,” Rob assured her, as he dug his heels into the pony’s bony sides and the little animal plunged forward. As he did so, Susyjan wheeled and vanished. It was important for her to be in bed in her tepee in case the alarm was given.

“Slow and steady’s the word, I guess, along here,” mused Rob, as the pony picked his way among rough rock and stubbly brush. “If this little animal doesn’t stumble and wake the whole camp, I’m in luck. Anyhow, Susyjan won’t get in trouble over it now. That’s one thing, and ”

Crash!

The little pony had done just what Rob dreaded. Nimble as it was, a loose rock had proved its undoing, and it had come down on its knees with a crash. Instantly it scrambled up again, but as it did so a series of demoniacal yells rang out behind the boy.

The alarm had been given.

Suddenly there was added to the general confusion the sound of confused shooting.

Bang! Bang!

“Waking up the camp,” muttered Rob, swinging the end of his rope hackamore and bringing it down over the pony’s flanks with a resounding “thwack.” “Now get a move on, Uncle One-Eyed Horse’s pony, for if ever you carried a fellow in need, you’ve got one on your back to-night.”