eader. The country was so broken by mountain, hill,
and wood, that the survey was much less extended than would be supposed.
He was disappointed in one respect, however: he could detect no Indian
village in the whole range of vision.

But, besides the dim smoke from the camp he had left a short time
before, he observed another to the westward, and a third to the south;
he concluded to make his way to the last, though he half suspected it
was the camp of another party of trappers, from whom he could not gather
the first morsel of information.

Deerfoot pushed toward the valley, less than a mile distant, from which
the tell-tale vapor ascended, and was quite close to the camp, when he
became aware that an altogether unexpected state of affairs existed.
Despite his usual caution, his approach was detected, and the Shawanoe
found himself in no little peril.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to make clear how it was Deerfoot
discovered this singular state of affairs; but he was more than a
hundred yards from the camp, which was screened by a dense undergrowth
and rocks, when he stopped abruptly, warned to do so by that subtle
instinct which is like a sixth sense.

He did not leap behind a tree, nor fall on his face and creep to the
rear of the large boulder on his right, but he stood erect, using the
faculties of hearing and sight with a delicate power and unerring skill
which were marvelous in the highest degree.

The black eyes glanced around, as he slowly turned his head from side to
side, and he saw everything in front, rear, at his right, left, and
above, among the limbs and on the ground. He heard the silken rustling
of several leaves in the top of a beach overhead, and he knew it was
caused by one of those slight puffs of wind which make themselves known
in that manner.

The inhalation through his nostrils brought the faint odor of the elm,
the oak, the hickory, the chestnut, the sycamore, and the resinous pine.
He identified them, I say, as well as the peculiar and indescribable
odor given off by the decaying leaves, the mossy rocks, and even the
rotting twigs and branches; but among them all he detected nothing of a
foreign nature.

But it was his hearing upon which he mainly depended, though his eyes
were forced to their highest skill. When the pinnated leaf of a hickory
was shaken loose by the wind puff it had hardly floated from its stem
before he caught sight of it, and followed it in its downward cou