nd he was ready to prepare for
his own rest. But he did not do anything until the seven had finished
their task.

He kept at a safe distance, shifting his position from time to time,
until the Indians had gathered all the firewood they needed and were
sitting in a group around the heap. Chaska used the flint and steel and
Henry saw the fire at last blaze up. The seven warmed their food over
the fire and then sat around it in a close and silent circle, with their
blankets drawn over their bodies, and their rifles covered up in their
laps. Sitting thus, Blackstaffe looked like the others and no one would
have known him from an Indian.

Henry had with him, carried usually in a small pack on his back, two
blankets, light in weight but of closely woven fiber, shedding rain, and
very warm. He crouched in a dense growth of bushes, three or four
hundred yards from the Indian fire. Then he put one blanket on the
ground, sat upon it, after the Indian fashion, and put the other blanket
over his head and shoulders, just as the warriors had done. He locked
his hands across his knees, while the barrel of the rifle which rested
between his legs protruded over his shoulder and against the blanket.
Some of the stronger and heavier bushes behind him supported his weight.
He felt perfectly comfortable, and he knew that he would remain so,
unless the rain increased greatly, and of that there was no sign.

Henry, though powerful by nature, and inured to great exertions, was
tired. The seven, including the eighth, had been traveling at a great
pace for more than twenty hours. While the Indians ate their food,
warmed over the fire, he ate his cold from his pocket. Then the great
figure began to relax. His back rested easily against the bushes. The
tenseness and strain were gone from his nerves and muscles. He had not
felt so comfortable, so much at peace in a long time, and yet not three
hundred yards away burned a fire around which sat seven men, any one of
whom would gladly have taken his life.

The clouds moved continually across the sky, blotting out the moon and
every star. The soft, light rain fell without ceasing and its faint
drip, drip in the woods was musical. It took the last particle of strain
and anxiety from Henry's mind and muscles. This voice of the rain was
like the voice of his dreams which sometimes sang to him out of the
leaves. He would triumph in his present task. He was bound to do so,
although he did not yet know t