n't want to see this spot any more, and I'd like to get away
from it just as soon as I can."

Was it some instinct? or an unseen warning given to Paul, and registered
on his sensitive mind, as a photographic plate takes light? To the keen
nose of the old wolf leader an alarming odor had come with the dawn! Was
a kindred signal sent to Paul?

Henry stared at his comrade in surprise, but he knew that he and Paul
were different, and he respected those differences which might be either
strength or weakness.

"All right, if you wish it, Paul," he said, lightly. "There are many
rooms in the Kaintuckee Inn, and if the one we have doesn't suit us
we'll just take another. Wait till I cut this venison down, and we'll
move without paying our score."

"I guess we paid that to the wolves," said Paul, smiling a little.

Henry detached the venison and divided it. Then each took his share, and
they moved swiftly away among the trees, still keeping to the general
course of the river. They came presently to a large area of unburned
forest, thick with foliage and undergrowth and, without hesitation, they
plunged into it. Henry was in front and suddenly to his keen ears came a
sound which he knew was not one of the natural noises of the forest. He
listened and it continued, a beat, faint but regular and steady. He knew
that it was made by footfalls, and he knew, too, that in the wilderness
everyone is an enemy until he is proved to be a friend. They were in the
densest of the undergrowth, and thought and action came to him on the
heels of each other, swift as lightning.

"Sink down, Paul! Sink down!" he cried, and grasping his comrade by the
shoulder he bore him down among the thick bushes, going down with him.

"Don't move for your life!" he whispered. "Men are about to pass and
they cannot be our kind!"

Paul at once became as still as death. He too under the strain of the
wilderness life and the need of caring for oneself was becoming
wonderfully acute of the senses and ready of action. The two boys
crouched close together, their heads below the tops of the bushes,
although they could see between the leaves and twigs, and neither moved
a hair.

Almost hidden in the foliage a line of Indian warriors, like dusky
phantoms, passed, in single file, and apparently stepping in one
another's tracks. Well for the boys that Paul had felt his impulse to
leave the vicinity of the besieged tree, because the course of the
warriors would ca