The Pioneer Boys of the Missouri; or, In the Country of the Sioux

THE most tremendous excitement followed; for the old squaw, still clinging to Roger, was appealing to the chief. Running Elk was listening, too, and seemed greatly interested in...

IN spite of their struggles the two boys were made prisoners, as was the Mandan warrior. There seemed to be fully a score of the hostile braves; but Dick, as soon as he could lo...

"Yes, I can well understand that it must seem so, after all the adventures and hardships you have met with in order to overtake us," replied the genial leader of the exploring p...

DURING this day there was hardly a stretch of half an hour but Dick and Roger made some new and interesting discovery. Now it was a little herd of antelope that, scenting the pr...

"Yes, and no one likes to pull them in better than I do; but it seems to me we already have enough in the dugout to supply the whole Armstrong settlement."

DICK almost held his breath until the last dark figure had flitted past. His greatest fear had been that in some manner the keen ears of the Indians might detect the presence of...

When the dark-faced man in the fringed buckskin said these two words in an angry tone, Roger felt something of a shock. He looked closer, and realized that possibly the other hu...

"DICK, he looks as if he was bringing us bad news!" exclaimed Roger, quickly. "Oh! I hope nothing has happened to Jasper Williams! What if he should be dead! All our long journe...

Then, as if by agreement, they turned and faced each other. Dick thrust out his hand impulsively, and it was instantly seized by his cousin. Indeed, Roger looked as though he co...

"IT seems as though we were foolish not to have brought our horses with us, Dick," Roger said, when noon had come and gone, and they were still pressing on at the side of the Ma...

THERE remained only an hour or so of daylight after Roger had secured the best parts of the carcass of the young elk, and fastened the bundle of fresh meat to his saddle.

"ALL my fault, Dick!" said Roger, as they hastened to pull in their lines, and then get the rude anchor up, for their position was an exposed one, with that furious wind sweepin...

"WHAT does this mean, Dick?" Roger asked, some days later, when they started to make a fire in the morning and found the air quite cold. "Does winter come so early in this north...

"It just happens, luckily," Dick whispered, having fastened his horse to a tree, "that the wind is in our favor, because we're to leeward of the elk, and they will not get scent...

The boys were thinking of halting for the night, and the western sky had taken on all the wonderful rosy tints at which even these frontier boys would gaze with something akin t...

"Yes; and, besides, just think what a mess we would have been in if it had been a party of Indian thieves, and they'd made a clean sweep of _all_ our horses," was the way Dick c...

THAT five minutes seemed a terribly long time to Roger. He could hear the oncoming herd close at hand now, so that stragglers began to pass them by on either side, and this fact...

now. When that loud crash came I got a bad scare, because I thought how lightning likes to pick out a big oak like this, and splinter it from top to bottom."

Of course Dick had expected that his mother would say something like this; but he looked more to his father for the consent that would mean so much. The very thought was stagger...

"HAVE you come to tell me what they have decided, Dick?" asked Roger, on the following afternoon, when his cousin overtook him on the river bank, where he had gone to work halfh...

THERE was still danger in crossing the broad river in so small a boat as the clumsy dugout; so that the two lads had to be constantly on their guard against being caught broadsi...

WHEN several more days had passed, and the boys found that they had again lost track of the river in seeking to save time by making a cut-off, Roger was very much downcast.

The blanket was there, carefully folded over a stick of wood, so as to give the impression at first glance that some one might be underneath, though Roger now saw that this coul...

"Yes, but you know he always had a habit of straying farther than either of the riding horses; and the chances are he's gone so far now that he doesn't know the way back. What w...

"IT _is_ rising, Roger," admitted the older boy, seriously, as he surveyed the tumbling waters, rushing along with a noise like the churning of a score of grist mills, such as t...

"HURRAH! I've got one already, Dick! See him pull, will you? Oh! this is worth waiting for, I tell you. And now, I wonder what kind it is, one of those slippery catfish, or the...

THE presence of the panther so terrified the horses that they kept up a continual prancing; and it would have been next to impossible for any one to have taken a sure aim while...

FAR away, it seemed as though the whole surface of the prairie was in motion. To the right and left the boys had seen the same bewildering sight. Roger failed to comprehend what...

THE surprise of Jasper Williams was overwhelming when he learned that these two lads had braved the dangers of the wilderness, week in and week out, just to find him, so as to g...

"But, even as it is, we will outwit him," Dick observed, with that quiet resolution that was so distinctly a part of his character. "They can only have a day or so the start of...

Even while the excited Roger was speaking, Dick had acted. Of course the only thing that could be done in order to give the descending bear a fright was to fire a shot into his...