"Why, my brother!" cried the delighted white boy, "you are a bigger medicine man than the old fellow who danced, and shook those hollow gourds with the dried beans inside. Here are all my belongings, with not one thing missing. Oh! I tell you, it was a fine day I discovered you there in the grass, Blue Jacket. For you have returned what little we did a dozen fold!" But evidently the young Indian had his own ideas about that, for he shook his head, and made a grimace. He would never forget how those boys had stood between when the irate settler, Anthony Brady, demanded his blood! "No can repay. Armstrong name never can forget. You see. To-night we go away. Bob wait to show way home. Blue Jacket him not able go far. Much sorry!" he said, as he limped about the lodge to try his poor limb. But Sandy gripped the Shawanee's hand, while his boyish face fairly beamed with the affection he felt toward the gallant young savage. CHAPTER XXII THE ESCAPE "WHEN can we go, Blue Jacket?" asked the boy, with his usual impatience. "No can get away yet some time. Sandy look out," came the reply. "Well, I see what you mean," admitted the prisoner, reluctantly. "There does seem to be considerable of a stir around. Everybody is moving about. Even the dogs seem to be prowling around sniffing at things." "Ugh! much stir. Talk heap. French trader try to palaver with chiefs. Make think English bad men. Steal Indian country, kill squaws, papooses, all. Ugh!" and, from the way Blue Jacket said this, it was evident that he feared the influence of the smooth-voiced Jacques Larue would undo all the good his harangue had accomplished. Not that his people would think of putting Sandy to the stake. That bugbear had been effectually squelched after he had told how kind the two Armstrong boys had shown themselves to him. But they might refuse to let the prisoner go free, demanding that he be forced to join the tribe. The lodge was still to be a prison, for the squaw had betaken herself off, and Blue Jacket had said he would not be allowed to stay with his white brother. Even Sandy understood something of his danger. Perhaps it had to do with his impatience to get away from the village, with its clamor and its strange inhabitants. He remembered the skinny old crone who had wanted to adopt him as her own son. She meant it all in kindness, perhaps, but the very thought made poor Sandy shiver. "But look here, Blue Jacket, what about Bob?" he said, presently, after he had turned away from peeping out at the exit of the lodge. "Bob wait," replied the Indian with his customary taciturnity. "Yes, but when time passes, and I fail to come, he may get impatient and do something that will get him into trouble?" At this the young Indian shrugged his shoulders. Perhaps he had caught the manner from the French traders, oily men who often visited the Shawanees in their villages to barter poor guns and powder for their valuable pelts.