minishing rain now felt almost like
hail stones, but the clouds were floating away toward the northeast, and
the skies steadily lightened. Henry felt the warming and strengthening
influence of the vigorous exercise. His clothing was a wet roll about
him, but the blood began to flow in a vigorous stream through his veins,
and his muscles became elastic.
They followed by the side of the hurricane's track for several miles,
and Henry was astonished at the damage that it had done. Its path was
not more than two hundred yards wide, but within that narrow space
little had been able to resist it. Trees were piled in tangled masses.
Sometimes the revolving ball had thrown them forward and sometimes it
had thrown them, caught in the other whirl, backward.
They turned at last from this windrow of trees, and presently entered a
little prairie, where there was nothing to obstruct them. The rain was
now entirely gone, and the clouds were retreating far down in the
southwest. Timmendiquas looked up.
"Washuntyaandeshra (The Moon)," he said.
Henry guessed that this very long name in Wyandot meant the moon,
because there it was, coming out from the vapors, and throwing a fleecy
light over the soaked and dripping forest. It was a pleasing sight, a
friendly one to him, and he now felt unawed and unafraid. The wilderness
itself had no terrors for him, and he felt that somehow he would slip
through the hands of the Wyandots. He had escaped so many times from
great dangers that it seemed to him a matter of course that he should do
so once more.
They made greater speed on the prairie, which was covered only with long
grass and an occasional clump of bushes. But near its center something
rose up from one of the clumps, and disappeared in a streak of brown.
"Oughscanoto (Deer)," said the chief.
But Henry had known already. His eyes were as quick as those of
Timmendiquas.
They crossed the prairie and entering the woods again went on without
speaking. The moonlight faded, midnight passed, when Anue suddenly
stopped at the entrance to a rocky hollow, almost a cave, the inner
extension of which had escaped the sweep of the storm.
"We rest here," said White Lightning to Henry. "Do you still give your
promise?"
"Until I awake," replied the youth with a little laugh.
He entered the hollow, noticed that the dry leaves lay in abundance by
the rocky rear wall, threw himself down among them, and in a few moments
was asleep, while
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