forest was full of them. The creek was a bar holding them to an almost
straight line. It was wide and too deep except for swimming, rising
almost to the proportions of a river. Henry calculated too that the
creek did not flow far west of their hollow in the rock, and thus they
were forced, despite their wishes, to run toward the very place they
wished to avoid.

"We've certainly had bad luck," he said to Sol, "and I think we've
stirred up a regular hornet's nest. Hark to that!"

From their right came a swelling war whoop with the ferocious whining
note at the end, and the eyes of the two fugitives met. Each, despite
the dark, could read the alarm in the face of the other. They had not
run out of the trap. Instead the trap was about to be sprung upon them.
With the unfordable stream on one side of them, an Indian band on the
other, and an Indian band behind them their case was indeed serious. The
transition from the Garden of Eden to a world of danger was sudden and
complete.

The band in the rear gave answer to the cry of their comrades in the
west, and Henry and the shiftless one had never before heard a whoop so
full of exultation and ferocity. Henry understood it as truly as if it
had been spoken in words. It said that the fugitives were surely theirs,
that they would be caught very soon, that they would be given to the
torture and that all the warriors should see the flames lick around
their bare bodies.

A red mist appeared before the eyes of Henry. The wonderful peace, and
the kindness toward all things that had enwrapped him, as he lay all day
long in the happy valley, were gone. Instead his veins were flushed with
anger. The warriors would exult over the torture and death of his
comrades and himself. Well, he would show them that a man could not be
burnt at the stake, until he was caught, and it was easy to exult too
soon.

He whirled for an instant, raised his rifle, fired, whirled back again
and then ran on. The whole motion, the brief curve about, and then the
half circle back, seemed one, and yet, as the two ran on, they heard a
warrior utter a death shout, as he fell in the forest.

"I reckon they'll keep back a little when they learn how we kin shoot,"
said Shif'less Sol. "Yes, they're not so close, by at least thirty
yards. Now, how foolish that is!"

The Indians fired a dozen shots, but all their bullets flew wild. Then a
pattering upon leaves and bark, but neither of the flying two was
touched