h to be seen by any of the women or
children about the cabins, for they all knew the boys, because they
were accustomed to come to Oakland for supplies; then, too, the boys
wished to remain on friendly terms with their neighbors. Another thing
worried them. They did not know what to do with their prisoners after
they should have captured them. However, they pushed on and soon came
to a dim cart-way, which ran at right-angles to the main road and
which went into the very heart of Holetown. Here they halted to
reconnoitre and to inspect their weapons.

Even from the main road, the track, as it led off through the
overhanging woods with thick underbrush of chinquapin bushes, appeared
to the boys to have something strange about it, though they had at
other times walked it from end to end. Still, they entered boldly,
clutching their guns. Willy suggested that they should go in Indian
file and that the rear one should step in the other's footprints as
the Indians do; but Frank thought it was best to walk abreast, as the
Indians walked in their peculiar way only to prevent an enemy who
crossed their trail from knowing how many they were; and, so far from
it being any disadvantage for the deserters to know _their_ number, it
was even better that they should know there were two, so that they
would not attack from the rear. Accordingly, keeping abreast, they
struck in; each taking the woods on one side of the road, which he
was to watch and for which he was to be responsible.

The farther they went the more indistinct the track became, and the
wilder became the surrounding woods. They proceeded with great
caution, examining every particularly thick clump of bushes; peeping
behind each very large tree; and occasionally even taking a glance up
among its boughs; for they had themselves so often planned how, if
pursued, they would climb trees and conceal themselves, that they
would not have been at all surprised to find a fierce deserter, armed
to the teeth, crouching among the branches.

Though they searched carefully every spot where a deserter could
possibly lurk, they passed through the oak woods and were deep in the
pines without having seen any foe or heard a noise which could
possibly proceed from one. A squirrel had daringly leaped from the
trunk of a hickory-tree and run into the woods, right before them,
stopping impudently to take a good look at them; but they were hunting
larger game than squirrels, and they resisted t