grounds of the Conestogas."

Landless shook his head. "My thanks and good wishes go with you, friend,
but my path lies towards the Blue Mountains. Farewell."

He put out his hand, but the Indian did not touch it. Instead, he
stooped and examined the ground about him with attention, then,
beckoning the other to follow, he moved rapidly and silently along the
border of the creek. Landless overtook him and laid his hand upon his
arm. "This is my path, but yours lies across the river, to the north."

"If my brother will not go with me, I will go with my brother," said the
Conestoga.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE BRIDGE OF ROCK

For twenty days they had followed the Ricahecrians. At times the trail
lay before them so plain that even Landless's unaccustomed eyes could
read it; at times he saw nothing but untrodden ways--no sign to show
that man had been in that wilderness since the beginning of the
world--but the Susquehannock saw and went steadily onward; at times they
lost it altogether, to find it hours, days afterwards.... It had led
them westward, then south to the banks of the Powhatan, then westward
again. At first they had to avoid an occasional clearing with the cabin
of a pioneer rising from it, or some frontier post, or the village of
one of the Powhatan tribes, but that time had long past. The world of
the white man was far behind them, so far that it might have been
another planet for all it threatened them; the Indian villages were few
and far between and inhabited by tribes whose tongue the Susquehannock
did not know. For the most part they gave these villages a wide berth,
but sometimes in the quiet of the evening they entered one, and were met
by the eldest man and conducted to the stranger's lodging, where slim
brown maidens came to them with platters of maize cakes and nuts and
broiled fish, and the warriors and old men gathered around, marveling at
the color of the one and conversing with the other in stately gesture.
Sometimes, crouched in a tangle of vines or behind the giant bole of
some fallen tree they watched a war party file past, noiseless, like
shadows, disappearing in the blue haze that filled the distant aisles of
the forest. Once a band of five attacked them, coming upon them in their
sleep. Three they killed and the others fled. They dipped into the next
stream that crossed their path and swam up it a long distance, then
emerged and went their way, tolerably confident that they had covered