CHAPTER TEN. 

PERPLEXITIES--OUR HUNTERS PLAN THEIR ESCAPE--UNEXPECTED INTERRUPTION-- THE TABLES TURNED--CRUSOE MOUNTS GUARD--THE ESCAPE. 

Dick Varley sat before the fire ruminating. We do not mean to assert that Dick had been previously eating grass. By no means. For several days past he had been mentally subsisting on the remarkable things that he heard and saw in the Pawnee village, and wondering how he was to get away without being scalped; he was now chewing the cud of this intellectual fare. We therefore repeat emphatically--in case any reader should have presumed to contradict us--that Dick Varley sat before the fire _ruminating_! 

Joe Blunt likewise sat by the fire along with him, ruminating too, and smoking besides. Henri also sat there smoking, and looking a little the worse of his late supper. 

"I don't like the look o' things," said Joe, blowing a whiff of smoke slowly from his lips, and watching it as it ascended into the still air. "That blackguard Mahtawa is determined not to let us off till he gits all our goods, an' if he gits them, he may as well take our scalps too, for we would come poor speed in the prairies without guns, horses, or goods." 

Dick looked at his friend with an expression of concern. "What's to be done?" said he. 

"Ve must escape," answered Henri; but his tone was not a hopeful one, for he knew the danger of their position better than Dick. 

"Ay, we must escape; at least we must try," said Joe; "but I'll make one more effort to smooth over San-it-sa-rish, an' git him to snub that villain Mahtawa." 
Who agrees with Henri about getting away?
"Ay, we must escape; at least we must try," said Joe;