with a mental groan the
prospect of keeping on the march until sunset, before securing anything
to eat.

"I have gone a full day many a time without food," he said, as he
tramped along, "but it seems to me I never was as ravenous as now. I
believe I could eat a pair of boiled moccasins, that is, if they had
never been in use."

He was ashamed of his weakness, and resolutely refrained from giving any
evidence of his suffering, but when he detected the pale green foliage
of the fragrant birch, he ventured to step out of the trail, break off a
branch and chew the bark, thus securing temporary relief from the
gnawing discomfort.

High noon came, but no halt had been made. The lad had left the trail
several times, and the warriors themselves were more careless about
their own footsteps, but seemed to have no desire to partake of food.

The first shock of surprise came when the party suddenly emerged from
the woods and paused on the bank of a deep, swift stream, fully a
hundred yards wide. The current, like the smaller one, was yellow and
roiled, and the boy looked upon it with a feeling akin to dismay.
Recalling the indignity to which he had been subjected earlier in the
day, he dreaded trusting himself in the water again.

"_This_ time they may take it into their heads to drown me," was his
thought.

But his nerves were not subjected to the trial. Nothing showed more
clearly the wonderful woodcraft of the Indians than the fact that, after
journeying many long leagues through the wilderness, without the
slightest trail to guide them, they struck the stream within a hundred
yards of the point at which they aimed from the first.

This was proven by the action of the warriors themselves. After talking
together for a few minutes, two of them walked a short distance up the
bank and drew a large canoe from under the shore, where they had left it
when journeying in the other direction.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SIGNAL FIRES.

The canoe was made of bark, with the ends turned up in the usual
fashion. Two long paddles belonging to it lay within, and were taken by
the warriors, who paddled it down to where the party were in waiting.
All stepped carefully inside, and the same Indians who brought it from
its hiding place turned the prow toward the other shore and began
swinging the paddles with the freedom and vigor peculiar to their
people. Jack was the last to seat himself, and he held fast as best he
could, dreading som