"The Indian tribe?" she answered slowly, drawing each breath.

"Birds," he answered sharply, blaming himself for all that had gone wrong.

"Not much, except that I love you. I'll be all right in a moment."

"Well, anyhow, to kill a crow the farmer sticks up a scarecrow in a field. He gets four others to join him setting the contraption up. The dummy really doesn't fool the birds, they are too smart for that. The purpose is to throw the count off. Crows have trouble counting past four. When his friends leave, one by one, the farmer remains with the decoy, motionless. The bird saw a group. He counted a group leaving. He comes in for a bite of corn, and WHAM."

"Jed," she exploded, "what are you telling me this for? I damned near get dragged to death. That son of a bitch is hanging around like a buzzard to finish us off. I'm tired, scared. I want to go home."

"Right. One thing at a time. We will make it back to Mt. Cascade yet. But first things first. We have to convince the people in the helicopter that they only saw a bunch of Indians. Man, like the crow, can count groups, and individuals. Most people have no trouble accurately isolating a unit of five at a glance, but past that, each item must be counted individually. There were nine of us riding, and three pack horses. Let's hope Kearns didn't make a head count. That he won't miss two figures out of the total. The thing to do is let Arty wear your very noticeable poncho, and have him lead the helicopter on a wild crow chase."

Setting the scene was easier said than done. A loose horse passed by, and taking advantage of a moment when the chopper had turning a blind side, Jed grabbed the trailing rope. The horse attracted the guide, but they had to make it appear he was looking for a lost poncho.

With the racket of a popping main rotor, and rustling vegetation, this took some complicated shouting. Artillio caught on quickly. But he also wanted to know where they would rendezvous.

"Ask what is over the next ridge."

"An open cliff," was his translated reply.

"Are there any old mines around here?" Jed asked next, figuring that Lieutenant Rosenbaum had been using a radio system which he would have wanted to protect from the elements. Because the equipment of those days was bulky, and temperamental, in the back of his mind Jed had a mental picture of the operation utilizing an old mine structure.

"Who knows?"

"No buildings?"