We kept still, and in a short time a similar sound was heard, plainer and evidently some ways down the stream.

Again and again we heard it, and decided that it must be a gun shot, and yet we were puzzled to know how it could be.

We were pretty sure there were no white people ahead of us, and we did not suppose the Indians in this far-off land had any firearms.

It might be barely possible that we were coming now to some wagon train taking a southern course, for we had never heard that there were any settlements in this direction and the barren country would preclude any such thing, as we viewed it now.

If it was a hostile band we could not do much with a rifle and a shot gun toward defending ourselves or taking the aggressive.