new they were real wolves, hanging on the flank of
the buffalo herd, cutting out the calves or the weak. The big bull
buffaloes moved and snorted again at the sound, but, when it was not
repeated, returned to their rest, all except one that lumbered forward a
step or two and then sank down directly on the little ridge by which
Henry had come to his hillock, as if he were a rear guard, closing the
way to the fugitive. He saw in it at once an omen. The superior power
that was watching over him had put the buffalo there to protect him,
and, free from any further apprehension, he closed his eyes, falling
asleep without delay.

Henry always felt afterward that he must have been wholly a creature of
the wild that night, else the buffaloes would have taken alarm at his
presence and probably would have stampeded. But the kinship they
recognized in him must have endured, or they had been harried so much by
the wolves that they did not feel like moving because of an intruder who
was so quiet and harmless that he was really no intruder at all. The
huge bull, crouched across the path by which he had come, puffed and
groaned at intervals, but he did not stir from his place. He was in very
truth, if not in intent, a guardian of the way.

And yet, while Henry slept amid the herd, the pursuit of him was
conducted with the energy, thoroughness and tenacity of which the
Indians were capable. The spirit of the great Shawnee chief, Red Eagle,
had been stung by his failure to overtake the fugitive, whom he knew to
be the youth Ware, their greatest foe, and he was resolved that Henry
should not escape. With him now were the renegades Blackstaffe and
Wyatt, and they, too, urged on the chase. They felt that if Henry could
be taken or destroyed, the four would fall easier victims, and then the
eyes of the woods that watched so well for the settlers would have gone
out forever.

All through the night the warriors ranged the forest, hunting for the
trail. The moon and the stars returned, bringing with them a light that
helped, and an hour or two after midnight a Shawnee found traces that
led toward the prairie. He called to his comrades and they followed it
to the prairie, where they lost it. The Indian warriors, looking
cautiously from the brush, saw in the open the clustered black forms,
looming gigantic in the moonlight, and they heard the heavings and
puffings and groanings of the big bulls. Directly in front of them,
across a low narrow r