Thus, we were once more fairly at our ease; the bugaboo of arrest and subsequent lying in jail seemed a remote contingency. The confidence born of successful escape stilled any misgivings I might have had as to the future. We lay at the post doing naught but eat and sleep and watch the long storehouse creep higher log by log, till the skeleton of a roof took form above the blackened walls. At night the eight of us would sprawl around a fire in the open, talking of everything under the sun, sometimes playing with a soiled and tattered pack of cards that these exiles cherished as their dearest possession. If we were in hostile territory no hint of apprehension cropped out in our intercourse; except as one or another referred casually to incidents past—now a fragmentary sentence which hinted of sharp action, or a joking allusion to the “H. B. C.” It was all in the day’s work with them. But I noticed that each night one man stood guard, pacing from corner to corner of the stockade, a rifle slung in the crook of his arm. Two weeks of this slipped by. Then one morning Barreau sat up on his bed and looked over to where I humped on my blankets, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “Bob,” he announced, “it is high time we bestirred ourselves once more.” After which he got quickly into his clothes, and went rummaging in a box by his bed—we had a little cabin to ourselves. His search bore fruit in the shape of moccasins, a bundle of them. “Here,” he tossed a pair to me. “You’ll find these better than riding boots. This time we go afoot.” Later, when breakfast was eaten, he made up a shoulder-pack for himself, and showed me how to prepare its fellow. Only actual necessaries found place therein. Extra moccasins, a few pounds of flour, a little packet of tea, pepper and salt, a tin plate and cup; these were laid upon a pair of heavy blankets, and tightly rolled in a square of thin canvas. A broad band of soft buckskin ran from the upper corners of the pack over one’s forehead. A loop slipped over each shoulder, leaving the hands free. I was astonished at the ease with which I could walk under this forty-pound burden. From among the post stores Barreau had long since armed me with a rifle that was twin to his own. Between us we carried a hundred cartridges. A butcher knife and a small hatchet apiece fitted us for all emergencies. Thus equipped we set out, bearing away up the Sicannie toward the grim range of peaks that cut the skyline into ragged notches. Ten miles upstream Barreau located the cluster of lodges he sought as our first objective point—the summer camp of Two Wolves and his band. There for two nights and a day we lingered, sitting in comical gravity for hours at a time in the lodge of the chief. The upshot of this lengthy council was that Two Wolves’ son girded a pack on his broad shoulders and joined us when we left the camp.