"Wal, now, Wesley, you're goin' to know what I've had in my think-box for some time; I can't keep it shut any longer," Abbott said. "We've heard that the Assiniboin camp is away off on the Assiniboin River. But you can hear a lot that ain't so. Maybe it is nowhere like that far off. Ag'in, that there war party that we routed don't have to go clear home to get help to try to wipe us out; the Assiniboins and the Yanktonnais are about the same breed of pups--both Sioux stock. All those pals of Slidin' Beaver's have to do is to let the Yanktonnais know that we have that there Is-spai-u horse with us, and they'll come a-runnin' after him, even if they don't care shucks about avengin' the death of Slidin' Beaver. I'll lay four bits that the Yanktonnais camp is a long way this side of the Assiniboin River. Let's look the thing in the face. It's possible, fellers, that the ball may open this very night!" "Let her come; we're here first!" Josh exclaimed. "You bet you! I'm jest a-achin' for a scrap with those cut-throats!" his twin chimed in. CHAPTER VIII THE MANDANS SING THEIR VICTORY SONG My uncle was not anxious for a fight with our enemies. I had never seen him so worried. When Abbott and the Twins had gone out of the lodge, he said to us: "I was too eager for this undertaking. Carroll and Steell warned me of its dangers, but I wouldn't listen. I shouldn't have come down here until I had engaged thirty or forty men to build the fort. We may all be wiped out! What would become of you, my woman, and of you, Thomas, if I were to go under now with the load of debt that I have incurred in St. Louis? And after all my years of endeavor, what a bad name would be mine!" "Now, Far Thunder, just you quit that worrying, for everything is going to come out right for us. I know it! I just know that the gods are with us," said my almost-mother. I could think of nothing to say. As I nodded to Pitamakan and we went out to drive the horses to their night-grazing I wished that I were not so tongue-tied. "What was he saying?" Pitamakan asked me. I told him, and back to the lodge he went, thrust his head inside the doorway and said: "Far Thunder, you have overlooked our main helper. That loud-mouthed gun of ours can defeat the cut-throats and all their brother tribes, too." "Maybe so, if they give us time to point and fire it at them," my uncle answered; and my almost-brother came back to me lightly humming his favorite war song.