"If we don't make 'a raise' afore long, I wouldn't say so. Thar plans is plain to this child as beaver sign. They're after Yute hair, as certain as this gun has got hind-sights; but they ar'nt agoin' to pack them animals after 'em, and have crawled like 'rattlers' along this bottom to câche 'em, till they come back from the Bayou,--and maybe they'll leave half a dozen 'soldiers'[25] with 'em." [25] The young untried warriors of the Indians are thus called. How right the wily trapper was in his conjectures will be shortly proved. Meanwhile, with his companion, he descended the bluff, and pushing his way into a thicket of dwarf pine and cedar, sat down on a log, and drew from an end of the blanket, which was strapped on his shoulder, a portion of a buffalo's liver, which they both discussed with infinite relish--and _raw_; eating in lieu of bread (an unknown luxury in these parts) sundry strips of dried fat. To have kindled a fire would have been dangerous, since it was not impossible that some of the Indians might leave their camp to hunt, when the smoke would at once have discovered the presence of enemies. A light was struck, however, for their pipes, and after enjoying this true consolation for some time, they laid a blanket on the ground, and, side by side, soon fell asleep. If Killbuck had been a prophet, or the most prescient of "medicine men," he could not have more exactly predicted the movements in the Indian camp. About three hours before "sun-down," he rose and shook himself, which movement was sufficient to awaken his companion. Telling La Bonté to lie down again and rest, he gave him to understand that he was about to reconnoitre the enemy's camp; and after examining carefully his rifle, and drawing his knife-belt a hole or two tighter, he proceeded on his dangerous errand. Ascending the same bluff from whence he had first discovered the Indian camp, he glanced rapidly round, and made himself master of the features of the ground--choosing a ravine by which he might approach the camp more closely, and without danger of being discovered. This was soon effected; and in half an hour the trapper was lying on his belly on the summit of a pine-covered bluff, which overlooked the Indians within easy rifle-shot, and so perfectly concealed by the low spreading branches of the cedar and arbor-vitæ, that not a particle of his person could be detected; unless, indeed, his sharp, twinkling gray eye contrasted too strongly with the green boughs that covered the rest of his face. Moreover, there was no danger of their hitting upon his trail, for he had been careful to pick his steps on the rock-covered ground, so that not a track of his mocassin was visible. Here he lay, still as a carcagien in wait for a deer, only now and then shaking the boughs as his body quivered with a suppressed chuckle, when any movement in the Indian camp caused him to laugh inwardly at his (if they had known it) unwelcome propinquity.