“They’ve seen some game beyant the point,” whispered Dick.  “Wonder what it is?”

But instead of pausing when out of earshot for the purpose of uncasing the guns or landing a stalking party, the Indians crept, gradually from the shore, caught the current, and shot away down stream in the direction from which they had come.

“It’s a bear,” said Sam, quietly.  “They’ve gone to get their war-paint on.”

The men rested the bow of their canoe lightly against the shore, and waited.  In a short time the Indian canoes reappeared.

“Say, they’ve surely got th’ dry goods!” commented Dick, amused.

In the short interval that had elapsed, the Indians had intercepted their women, unpacked their baggage, and arrayed themselves in their finest dress of ceremony.  Buckskin elaborately embroidered with beads and silks in the flower pattern, ornaments of brass and silver, sacred skins of the beaver, broad dashes of ochre and vermilion on the naked skin, twisted streamers of coloured wool—­all added to the barbaric gorgeousness of the old-time savage in his native state.  Each bowsman carried a long brass-bound forty-five “trade-gun,” warranted to kill up to ten yards.

“It’s surely a nifty outfit!” commented Sam, half admiringly.

A half dozen of the younger men were landed.  At once they disappeared in the underbrush.  Although the two white men strained their keen senses they were unable to distinguish by sight or sound the progress of the party through the bushes.

“I guess they’re hunters, all right,” conceded Dick.

The other men waited like bronze statues.  After a long interval a pine-warbler uttered its lisping note.  Immediately the paddles dipped in the silent deer-stalker’s stroke, and the cavalcade crept forward around the point.

Dick swept the shore with his eye, but saw nothing.  Then all heard plainly a half-smothered grunt of satisfaction, followed by a deep drawn breath.  Phantom-like, without apparently the slightest directing motion, the bows of the canoes swung like wind-vanes to point toward a little heap of driftlogs under the shadow of an elder bush.  The bear was wallowing in the cool, wet sand, and evidently enjoying it.  A moment later he stuck his head over the pile of driftwood, and indulged in a leisurely survey of the river.

His eye was introspective, vacant, his mouth was half open, and his tongue lolled out so comically that Dick almost laughed aloud.  No one moved by so much as a hand’s breadth.  The bear dropped back to his cooling sand with a sigh of voluptuous pleasure.  The canoes drew a little nearer.

Now old Haukemah rose to his height in the bow of his canoe, and began to speak rapidly in a low voice.  Immediately the animal bobbed into sight again, his wicked little eyes snapping with intelligence.  It took him some moments to determine what these motionless, bright-coloured objects might be.  Then he turned toward the land, but stopped short as his awakened senses brought him the reek of the young men who had hemmed in his shoreward escape.  He was not yet thoroughly alarmed, so stood there swaying uneasily back and forth, after the manner of bears, while Haukemah spoke swiftly in the soft Cree tongue.