you do. I tell you he's even
stronger and more resourceful than you suppose! Look how often he has
escaped us, when we were sure we held him fast! He'd find a way to live
in the big freeze, or anywhere. I've an idea that he's back up there by
the lake somewhere, and that the trail the warriors found was that of
another of the five, perhaps the traces of the fellow Shif'less Sol."

Henry's pulse leaped again, now with joy. The shiftless one had not
been taken nor slain, and doubtless none of the others either, or they
would have referred to it. But he waited to hear more, and not a dead
leaf nor a twig stirred in the thicket, he was so still.

"It seems strange," said Blackstaffe, thoughtfully, "that we have not
been able to take him, when more than a thousand warriors were in the
hunt, carried on without stopping, except during the big snow and the
big freeze. And the warriors are the best in the west, men who can come
pretty near seeing a trail through the air, men without fear. It almost
seems to me that there's been something miraculous about it."

Then one of the chiefs spoke for the first time, and it was Yellow
Panther, the Miami.

"Blackstaffe has spoken the truth," he said. "Ware is helped by evil
spirits, spirits evil to us, else he could not have slipped from our
traps so often. He has powerful medicine that calls them to his aid when
danger surrounds him."

Yellow Panther spoke with all the gravity and earnestness that became a
great Miami chief, and, as he finished, he looked up at the skies from
which the fugitive had summoned spirits to his help. The great Shawnee
chief, Red Eagle, standing by his side, nodded in emphatic confirmation.
Henry felt a peculiar quiver run through his blood. Had he really
received miraculous help, as the two chiefs thought? Lying there in such
a place at such a time there was much to make him think as they did.

"We've spread a mighty net, and we've caught nothing," said Braxton
Wyatt, deep disappointment showing in his tone. "We've not only failed
to get the leader of the five, but we've failed to take a single one of
them."

Now Henry's heart gave a great leap. He had inferred that all of his
comrades were yet safe, but here was positive proof in the words of
Wyatt. Why had he ever feared? He might have known that when he drew off
the Indian power they would be able to take care of themselves.

"I think," said Blackstaffe, "that we'd better continue our march to the