“Is that the bluff, Joe?”

“No, Dick; that’s too near.  T’other one’ll be best—­far away to the right.  It’s a little one, and there’s others near it.  The sharp eyes o’ the Redskins won’t be so likely to be prowlin’ there.”

“Come on, then; but we’ll have to take down by the lake first.”

In a few minutes the hunters were threading their way through the outskirts of the wood at a rapid trot, in the opposite direction from the bluff, or wooded knoll, which they wished to reach.  This they did lest prying eyes should have followed them.  In quarter of an hour they turned at right angles to their track, and struck straight out into the prairie, and after a long run they edged round and came in upon the bluff from behind.

It was merely a collection of stunted but thick-growing willows.

Forcing their way into the centre of this they began to examine it.

“It’ll do,” said Joe.

“De very ting,” remarked Henri.

“Come here, Crusoe.”

Crusoe bounded to his master’s side, and looked up in his face.

“Look at this place, pup; smell it well.”

Crusoe instantly set off all round among the willows, in and out, snuffing everywhere, and whining with excitement.

“Come here, good pup; that will do.  Now, lads, we’ll go back.”  So saying, Dick and his friends left the bluff, and retraced their steps to the camp.  Before they had gone far, however, Joe halted, and said,—­

“D’ye know, Dick, I doubt if the pup’s so cliver as ye think.  What if he don’t quite onderstand ye?”

Dick replied by taking off his cap and throwing it down, at the same time exclaiming, “Take it yonder, pup,” and pointing with his hand towards the bluff.  The dog seized the cap, and went off with it at full speed towards the willows, where it left it, and came galloping back for the expected reward—­not now, as in days of old, a bit of meat, but a gentle stroke of its head and a hearty clap on its shaggy side.

“Good pup! go now an’ fetch it.”

Away he went with a bound, and in a few seconds came back and deposited the cap at his master’s feet.

“Will that do?” asked Dick, triumphantly.

“Ay, lad, it will.  The pup’s worth its weight in goold.”

“Oui, I have said, and I say it agen, de dog is human, so him is.  If not, fat am he?”

Without pausing to reply to this perplexing question, Dick stepped forward again, and in half-an-hour or so they were back in the camp.

“Now for your part of the work, Joe.  Yonder’s the squaw that owns the half-drowned baby.  Everything depends on her.”

Dick pointed to the Indian woman as he spoke.  She was sitting beside her tent, and playing at her knee was the identical youngster who had been saved by Crusoe.

“I’ll manage it,” said Joe, and walked towards her, while Dick and Henri returned to the chief’s tent.