Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/288

 not to run, however, nor permit them to approach you with the idea of disarming you or taking you prisoner. Should you be unable to evade them, you are to guard your liberty and bring them to the fort, where I will attend to them."

A sentry was posted all day on the top of a hill at the edge of the stockade prairie, from where he had a fine view up and down the fork and along the main river also. During the nights another sentry kept watch from one of the bastions or little blockhouses on the land-side corners of the stockade.

The stockade had been enclosed by the log walls, the pickets had been planted, and within a day or two the outside ditch would be ready for the water.

On February 24 the lieutenant took Stub again upon another scout and hunt. The two spies had been gone seven days, and nothing had been heard from them. He was getting nervous while waiting for the sergeant and Terry to return with the horses, Baroney, Pat, and John and Tom. Meat was low; the men themselves had been too busy to hunt—but the water was in the ditch and everything was snug and shipshape.

He and Stub were out two days, scouting eastward, to examine the traveled road along which the Spanish might come. They made a circle and arrived