enty
warriors coming from the south and joining that of the main body. The
briers and grass were tangled considerably, and, as he looked closely,
his eyes caught a tint of red on the earth. It was only a spot, and once
more the wilderness reader read what was printed in his book. This band
had brought wounded men with it, and the tribes were not fighting among
themselves. They had encountered the Kentuckians, hunters perhaps, or a
larger force maybe, and they had not escaped without damage. Henry
exulted, not because blood had been shed, but because some prowling band
intent upon scalps had met a check.

He followed the ruddy trail until it emerged into the broader one and
then to a point beside it, where a cluster of huge oaks flung a pleasant
shade. Here the wounds of the warriors had been bandaged, as fragments
of deerskin lay about. One of them had certainly suffered a broken arm
or leg, because pieces of stout twigs with which they had made splints
lay under one of the trees.

The next day he turned another page in his book, and read about the
great feast the army had held. He reached one of the little prairies so
common in that region. Not many days before it had been a great berry
field, but now it was trampled, and stripped. Seven or eight hundred
warriors had eaten of the berries and they had also eaten of much solid
food. At the far edge of the prairie just within the shade of the forest
he found the skeletons of three buffaloes and several deer, probably
shot by the hunters on that very prairie. A brook of fine clear water
flowed by, and both banks were lined with footsteps. Here the warriors
after eating heavily had come to drink. Many of the trees near by
contained the marks of hatchet strokes, and Henry read easily that the
warriors had practiced there with their tomahawks, perhaps for prizes
offered by their white leaders. Cut in the soft bark of a beech he read
the words "Braxton Wyatt." So he had been at work with the clasp knife
again, and Henry inferred that the young renegade was worried and
nervous or he would not have such uneasy hands.

Most of the heavier footprints, those that turned out, were on one side
of the camp and Henry read from this the fact that the English and
Tories had drawn somewhat apart, and that the differences between them
and the Indians had become greater. He concentrated his mind again upon
the problem, and at length drew his conclusion from what he had read.

The doubts