"They were not satisfied with destroying the paper we had sent home, but came back to keep us from getting Jasper to sign another. Oh! they are determined to steal our homes away from us! They will stop at nothing to take them!" "All is not lost yet. Remember that we have always managed to pull through in times past. We shall again; something seems to tell me so." When Dick said this he looked so determined and resolute that, as usual, Roger found his own spirits wonderfully revived. "I complain a lot, I know," he remarked, as though ashamed of his actions, "but all the same I give up hard. Deep down there's a never-say-die feeling in my heart. When you say we will keep everlastingly at it you express what I feel." Both felt better after that. They knew that it was useless to pay any further attention to the faint trail of Jasper Williams and his two companions. They must trust partly to luck in order to once more run across the man they so urgently desired to see. "One thing we must remember," said Dick, as they again set forth on their way. "What is that?" asked Roger. "We have come to know Jasper fairly well since joining the exploring company, and helping him to escape from Running Elk's Sioux. We even know some of his signals, and if we have any reason to believe he is around we can make use of them to communicate with him." "That is a good idea," agreed Roger. "Even if he is a prisoner we could let him know friends were near by using the secret call. But we seem to be making for the bank of the river; tell me what plan you have in mind now." "You heard me ask Hardy about the exact place they were set upon by the Blackfeet? That is where we must go first of all. Trail we have none, for the last seen of Jasper he was on the water, which leaves no track. But, starting from that point we will follow up the river until we find something." "We could not do better, I am sure," acknowledged the other, and Mayhew nodded his head as though he also concurred in the plan. "If the Frenchmen are Lascelles and his son," continued Dick, as they trudged along, "they would not care if Jasper were killed, so long as he could not interfere again in their scheme to defraud our parents out of their property." "Yes," added Roger, impulsively, "and, should our friend be captured, they would influence the Blackfeet to carry him far away to their village in the Northwest country, where he would be made to adopt their ways and become an Indian warrior. Either that, or else he would be burned at the stake, after their usual custom with prisoners of war." "We are close to the river," Dick announced. The Yellowstone is a very turbulent stream, especially far up toward where it has its source in the great lake of the same name. It rushes down over its rocky bed with numerous cataracts, making navigation impossible to any but canoes managed by the most experienced paddlers.