While Mayhew was talking Dick watched the face of Beaver Tail. He could see that by degrees the chief was catching the drift of what the guide tried to explain. Of course this consisted in the main of their desire to overtake Williams, who had set off on a hunting trip, and more to the effect of how he had been unlucky enough to fall into the hands of the Blackfeet, who were acting in conjunction with certain French traders. It was a clever idea on the part of the guide to bring in the Blackfeet, because, as he very well knew, there was never-ending war between that tribe and the Sioux. This would make Beaver Tail all the more willing, even eager, to lend his aid in effecting the rescue of Williams. Step by step Mayhew advanced. When his limited stock of words failed him, the guide resorted to crude drawings on the snow, at which device he seemed to be quite adept, if the boys could judge from the chorus of "how-how" that broke from the crowd of braves after each effort in this line, and which they judged meant appreciation on the part of the interested onlookers. Finally the guide had reached the conclusion. He must have asked Beaver Tail to help the paleface friends of the great chief, Running Elk, to rescue their companion from the hated enemy, because the Indian was nodding his head as though the proposition struck him favorably. Then he commenced talking in return. When he saw from the puzzled expression on the face of Mayhew that the frontiersman failed to catch the idea he was trying to express, the chief turned to the sign language, upon which his race have always relied when communicating with each other, or to commemorate great events such as glorious victories. "What does he say, Mayhew?" asked Roger. "He knows where the Frenchmen have their camp, and it is, as we believed, over on the big water," replied the guide. "Good! And will he take us there, and help us rescue Jasper?" continued Roger. "He says he will," Mayhew announced, with a happy smile on his weatherbeaten face, for things had taken a decided turn in their favor, and he began to imagine himself back in the main camp, ready to make another attempt at taking that message down to the mouth of the Missouri River. "When?" continued the impatient Roger. "We can be heading over that way as soon as we feel like it," the guide explained. "The lake is about seven miles from here, as near as I can make him out from his sign drawing. Once we get close by we must wait for night to come. It is against Injun nature to ever make an attack in broad daylight, when it can be avoided." "So long as they do not injure Jasper it will not matter much," Roger admitted. "If they have not hurt him up to now I do not think anything is going to happen before night comes around," Dick told him.