t
he saw when he plunged into the forest. Then he was again the hunter,
the trailer and the slayer of men.

While they considered whether or not to pursue, Henry Ware had said
nothing; but all the primitive impulses of man handed down from lost
ages of ceaseless battle were alive within him; he wished them to go, he
would show the way, the savage army would make a trail through the
forest as plain to him as a turnpike to the modern dweller in a
civilized land, and his heart throbbed with fierce exultation, when the
decision to follow was at last given. In the forest now he was again at
home, more so than he had been inside the palisade. Around him were all
the familiar sights and sounds, the little noises of the wilderness that
only the trained ear hears, the fall of a leaf, or the wind in the
grass, and the odor of a wild flower or a bruised bough.

Brain and mind alike expanded. Instinctively he took the lead, not from
ambition, but because it was natural; he read all the signs and he led
on with a certainty to which neither Ross nor Shif'less Sol pretended to
aspire. The two guides and hunters were near each other, and a look
passed between them.

"I knew it," said Ross; "I knew from the first that he had in him the
making of a great woodsman. You an' I, Sol, by the side of him, are just
beginners."

Shif'less Sol nodded in assent.

"It's so," he said. "It suits me to follow where he leads, an' since we
are goin' after them warriors, which I can't think a wise thing, I'm
mighty glad he's with us."

Yet to one experienced in the ways of the wilderness the little army
though it numbered less than a hundred men would have seemed formidable
enough. Many youths were there, mere boys they would have been back in
some safer land, but hardened here by exposure into the strength and
courage of men. Nearly all were dressed in finely tanned deerskin,
hunting shirt, leggings and moccasins, fringes on hunting shirt and
leggings, and beads on moccasins. The sun glinted on the long slender,
blue steel barrel of the Western rifle, carried in the hand of every
man. At the belt swung knife and hatchet, and the eyes of all, now that
the pursuit had begun, were intense, eager and fierce.

The sounds made by the little Western army, hid under the leafy boughs
of the forest, gradually died away to almost nothing. No one spoke, save
at rare intervals. The moccasins were soundless on the soft turf, and
there was no rattle of arms,