Before Dick could make a move, however, he too felt a heavy weight strike him on the shoulders so that he was knocked to his back; and, as he lay there gasping for breath, he looked up into the painted faces of several Indian warriors who came dropping from the trees as though they were over-ripe plums in a gale of wind. After all, the supposed friendly Indian had played them false, and had actually led the two boys into a cleverly arranged ambuscade. CHAPTER XIV PRISONERS OF THE DACOTAHS DICK knew the folly of resistance when he saw that, besides the two warriors who held him down, there were half a dozen others nearby. Roger, always impulsive and headstrong, was struggling desperately, though without the slightest chance of breaking away from his captors. Understanding what was taking place close by, Dick called out: "Give up, Roger; it is foolish to fight against such odds. You will only be hurt for your pains, and nothing gained. Leave it all to me!" Not only did Roger hear these words, but his own good sense told him the wisdom of yielding to overwhelming numbers. But it was always a difficult thing for Roger to believe in the old saying to the effect that "he who fights and runs away may live to fight another day." After being disarmed the two boys were allowed to get upon their feet. They discovered that their dusky captors undoubtedly belonged to the same tribe as their treacherous guide, and, therefore, must be Dacotahs. That guide was clutching Roger's gun as though he expected to retain it as the price of his labors in thus entering the camp of the strange "palefaces," and luring the two boys into the trap so cunningly contrived. Dick was far from downcast. It took considerable to make him feel as though everything were dark around him. And, in order to cheer Roger up, as well as to arouse his interest in planning an escape, the first remark Dick made was in the line of an attempt to guess how it had all been planned. "Look, they are marking a smoke now," he told his companion, as several of their captors struck flint and steel together, and with the spark thus generated started a fire in a little pile of greenish-looking wood. "That must be meant for a signal to some one who is away from here," Roger commented, on observing what was going on. "Dick, what does all this mean? You are always good at hitting on the truth while I grope in the dark. Why do you think these Indians want to make us prisoners?" "It was a trap, you understand, Roger?" "Oh! yes, that's as plain as can be," replied the other, readily enough; "for they were all hiding up in these trees while we kept on fishing so merrily, without dreaming that we were being watched every minute of the time." "And, Roger, the guide led us into the mess; now we can understand why he was so eager to fetch us up here." "Then you believe, do you, Dick, he planned this thing; that perhaps he even entered our camp with such a game in his mind?"