The heavy clouds soon disappeared, the moon came up, and I could see our surroundings very well. The horses were ripping off great mouthfuls of rich bunch-grass and lustily chewing it. Their deep, satisfied breathing gave me a glad feeling. All round us wolves were howling and coyotes were yelping in high falsetto voices. How different were these two branches of the great wolf family, I thought. The wolves were of a serious, dignified nature; they seemed never to howl except to communicate with one another. The coyotes gathered in bands and wandered aimlessly from ridge to ridge, stopping frequently and raising their sharp, pointed noses to the sky and yelping. My thoughts were not long upon the wolves. I remembered how worried my uncle was when I had left our lodge; how serious was the expression of Abbott's eyes when he predicted that the attack by the cut-throats was about to take place. I stared at the faint, moonlit outlines of the Moccasin Mountains, away off to the southwest. Somewhere along the trail at the foot of them the Pikuni were doubtless camping that night. Unwittingly I cried out in Blackfoot, "Oh, hurry! Hurry to us, you men of the Pikuni, else you will come too late!" "What? What did you say? Do you see enemies?" Pitamakan whispered as he sat up suddenly at my side. "Oh, nothing. I was just calling to our people to hurry to us. I am so afraid that they may not get here in time to help us," I answered. "You forget that the loud-mouthed gun is of great strength. It can shoot one of those big, hard metal balls a long way. And at short range just think what it can do with a sackful of our small, soft balls!" "Yes, true enough. But think how long it takes to move and sight and fire it! Loud-mouth is now pointing out the south side of the barricade. Should the cut-throats suddenly attack us from the north side, we should never even get a chance to fire it!" "Ha! What a crazy head I am, never to have thought about that! Loud-mouths are of sure help only when there are two of them, each in a little outsetting house of its own, at opposite corners of a fort. Almost-brother, Far Thunder should send us at once to meet our people and get the warriors here as fast as their horses can carry them." "You have spoken my thought, too. We will tell him about it in the morning," I answered. "Yes, we will do that. Let us drive the horses in very early." After a time we detected off to the west a dark, wide, cloud-like mass slowly moving over the plain. It was composed of buffaloes, of course, a large herd of them grazing straight toward the horses. It would not do to let them come on, for in the stampede that was sure to occur the frightened horses might go with them. We went slowly and silently toward them and suddenly sprang forward, waving our blankets. They paused, stared at us for a moment, then turned and went thundering off to the south. There must have been a thousand of them, judging by the noise that they made.