zzles of their long rifles. They were watching
him and he waved his free hand in salute. Boone and Kenton took off
their raccoon skin caps in reply. He did not look back again until he
was nearly to the northern shore, and then they were gone.

He reached the bank without obstruction, moored his log among some
bushes, and, when he was dry, dressed again. Then he went down stream
along the shore for several miles, keeping a watch for landmarks that he
had seen before. It was a difficult task in the night, and after an hour
he abandoned it. Finding a snug place among the bushes, he lay down
there and slept until dawn. Then he renewed his search.

Henry, at present, was not thinking much of the fleet. His mind was
turning to his faithful comrades who had dropped one by one on the way.
Both fleet and fort could wait a while. So far as he was concerned, they
must wait. He roved now through the bushes and along the water's edge,
looking always for something. It was a familiar place that he sought,
one that might have been seen briefly, but, nevertheless, vividly, one
that he could not forget. He came at last to the spot where he and
Shif'less Sol had sprung into the water. Just there under the bank the
shiftless one had drifted away, while he swam on, drawing the pursuit
after him. It had been only a glimpse in the dusk of the night, but he
was absolutely sure of the place, and as he continued along the bank he
examined every foot of it minutely.

Henry did not expect to find any traces of footsteps after so many days,
but the bank for some distance was high and steep. It would not be easy
to emerge from the river there, but he felt sure that Shif'less Sol had
left it--if he survived--at the first convenient point.

In about three hundred yards he came to a dip in the high bank, a gentle
slope upon which a man could wade ashore. Shif'less Sol, wounded and
drifting with the current, would certainly reach this place and use it.
Henry, without hesitation, turned aside into the woods and began to look
for a trail or a sign of any kind that would point a way. Twenty yards
from the landing he found a dark stain on an oak tree, a little higher
than a man's waist.

"Shif'less Sol," he murmured. "He was wounded and he leaned here against
this tree to rest after he came from the river. Now, which way did he
go?"

He tried to make a reckoning of the point at which Tom Ross had been
compelled to turn aside, and he reckoned that it