ts sides sloped smoothly down to the banks of a small
but deeply bedded river, which, though a stream of considerable volume
during the winter, was now so drought-shrunken as at intervals to ripple
over its rocky bottom, filling the valley with pleasant murmurings,
audible from the tops of the hills around. The slopes, for a mile above
and below, were nearly bare of trees, being covered instead with a
luxuriant growth of blue-grass, the peculiar green whereof was relieved
with pleasing effect by the rich purple bloom of the iron-weed, which in
dense patches mottled all the glade. If we may except the grass and
iron-weeds, which grew everywhere, and the clump of trees from out of
which was rising the smoke of the Indian camp-fire, the opposite hill
showed a bare front, and sloped steeply, but smoothly, to the edge of
the river, where it was snubbed short by an overleaning bank twenty feet
high.

To Big Black Burl, as a game-hunter, this valley-glade, with its verdant
slopes, affording the richest pasturage to the wild herds of the forest,
would have been a right delectable prospect; but to him as an
Indian-hunter, it was a sight disheartening enough, running, as it did,
square across his war-path, and seeming to offer scarce the shadow of a
shade for an ambush, without which it would be desperation itself to
push the adventure to the perilous edge. Judging from the general
direction he had traveled since quitting Fort Reynolds, and from the
length of time it had taken him to reach that spot, he guessed that he
must be within a very few miles of the Ohio River--and if he suffered
the savages to put that broad barrier between themselves and pursuit,
scarcely one chance in a thousand could be left of his ever being able
to overtake them and rescue his little master. Now, or never, must be
struck the telling blow. But how?

At one moment he felt an impulse--so desperate seemed the case--to dash
across the open valley, and scaling the untimbered height, right in the
face of the watchful foe, open a way of deliverance to his little
master; or, failing in the attempt, bring life to the bitter end at
once. But this was a thought not worth the second thinking. And in
another moment he had nearly determined to make a wide circuit, in order
to gain the rear of the enemy's stronghold. Perhaps by bursting suddenly
on them from that unexpected quarter, he and Grumbo, by the very
strangeness, not to say terribleness, of their aspect,