ious to rejoin. It
was more than likely that they had left the oasis and had come a long
distance to the north, but where they were now was another of the
serious problems that confronted him from day to day. In a wilderness so
vast four men were like the proverbial needle in the haystack.

But Henry trusted to luck, which in his mind was no luck at all, rather
the favor of the greater powers which had watched over him in his flight
and which had not withdrawn their protection on his return, as the king
of the beavers had shown. All the following day he fled southward,
despite the heavy pack he carried, and made great speed. Here, he
judged, the winter had not been severe, since the melting of the great
snow that he had encountered on his way toward the lake, and he slept
the next night in the lee of a hill, his blankets and the painted coat
still being sufficient for his comfort.

At noon of the next day, coming into low ground, mostly a wilderness of
bushes and reeds, he heard shots and soon discovered that they came from
the rifles and muskets of Indians hunting buffalo and deer, which could
not easily escape them in the marshes. For fear of leaving a trail, sure
to be seen in such soft ground, he lay very close in a dense thicket of
bushes until night, which was fortunately very dark, came. Then he made
off under cover of the darkness, and saw Indian fires both to the right
and to the left of him. He passed so close to the one on his right that
he heard the warriors singing the song of plenty, indicating that the
day had yielded them rich store of deer and buffalo. Most of the Indians
were not delicate feeders and they would probably eat until they could
eat no more, then, lying in a stupor by the fire, they would sleep until
morning.

He did not stop until after midnight, and slept again in the protection
of a steep hill, advancing the next day through a country that seemed to
swarm with warriors evidently taking advantage of the weather to refill
the wigwams, which must have become bare of food. Henry, knowing that
his danger had been tripled, advanced very slowly now, traveling usually
by night and lying in some close covert by day. His own supplies of food
fell very low, but at night, at the edge of a stream, he shot a deer
that came down to drink, and carried away the best portions of the body.
He took the risk because he believed that if the Indians heard the shot
they would think it was fired by one of thei