owed
it clearly. Most of the white men had stayed in one group on the right.
Here were the deep traces of military boot heels such as the officers
might wear.

Again his vivid imagination and power of mental projection into the dark
reconstructed the whole scene. The Indians, Wyandots, Shawnees, Miamis
and the others, had danced wildly, whirling their tomahawks about their
heads, their naked bodies painted in many colors, their eyes glaring
with the intoxication of the dance. Timmendiquas and the other chiefs
had stood here looking on; over there, on the right, Caldwell and his
officers had stood, and few words had passed between officers and
chiefs.

"Now the division will become more complete," said Henry to himself, as
he followed the trail anew into the forest, and he was so sure of it
that he felt no surprise when, within a mile, it split abruptly. The
greater trail continued to the west, the smaller turned abruptly to the
north, and this was the one that contained the imprints of the military
boot heels. Once more he read his text with ease. Timmendiquas and
Caldwell had parted company. The English and Tories were returning to
Detroit. Timmendiquas, hot with wrath because his white allies would not
help him, was going on with the warriors to the defense of their
villages.

Without beholding with his own eyes a single act of this army he had
watched the growth of the quarrel between red and white and he had been
a witness to its culmination. But all these movements had been
influenced by some power of which he knew nothing. It was his business
to discover the nature of this power, and he would follow the Indian
trail a little while longer.

Henry had not suffered for food. Despite the passage of the Indian army
the country was so full of game that he was able to shoot what he wished
almost when he wished, but he felt that he was now coming so near to the
main body that he could not risk a shot which might be heard by outlying
hunters or skirmishers. He also redoubled his care and rarely showed
himself on the main trail, keeping to the woods at the side, where he
would be hidden, an easy matter, as except for the little prairies the
country was covered with exceedingly heavy forest.

The second day after the parting of the two forces he saw smoke ahead,
and he believed that it was made by the rear guard. It was a thin column
rising above the trees, but the foliage was so heavy and the underbrush
so dense that