eatly
relieved his tension. Fortunately his tree was very close to Sol's, and
they could carry on a whispered conversation.

"Do you think the Shawnees will really come?" asked Paul, who was always
incredulous when the forest was so silent.

"Come! Of course they will!" replied Shif'less Sol. "If for no other
reason, they'll do it jest to make me trouble. I ought to be back thar in
the East, teachin' school or makin' laws fur somebody."

Paul's eyes wandered from Sol to his comrade, and he saw Henry suddenly
move, ever so little, then fix his gaze on a point in the forest, three or
four hundred yards away. Paul looked, too, and saw nothing, but he knew
well enough that Henry's keener gaze had detected an alien presence in the
bushes.

Henry whispered something to Ross, who followed his glance and then nodded
in assent. The others, too, soon looked at the same point, Jim Hart
craning his long neck until it arched like a bow. Presently from a dense
clump of bushes came a little puff of white smoke, and then the stillness
was broken by the report of a rifle. A bullet buried itself in one of the
trees on the hill, and Shif'less Sol turned over with a sniff of contempt.

"If they don't shoot better'n that," he said, "I might ez well go to
sleep."

But the forest duel had begun, and it was a contest of skill against
skill, of craft against craft. Every device of wilderness warfare known to
the red men was practiced, too, by the white men who confronted them.

Paul at first felt an intense excitement, but it was soothed by the calm
words of Shif'less Sol.

"I'd be easy about it, Paul," said the shiftless one. "That wuz jest a
feeler. They've found out that we're ready for 'em. There ain't no chance
of a surprise, an' they shot that bullet merely as a sort o' way o'
tellin' us that they had come. Things won't be movin' fur some time yet."

Paul found that Shif'less Sol was right. The long waiting customary in
such forest combats endured, but he was now becoming more of a stoic, and
he used the time, at least in part, for rest, although every nerve and
muscle was keyed to attention. It was fully an hour later when a shot came
from behind a tree much nearer to them, and a bullet cut a fragment of
bark from the gigantic beech that sheltered Shif'less Sol. There was a
second report before the sound of the first had died away, and a Shawnee,
uttering a smothered cry, fell forward from his shelter, and lay upon the
ground,