on to the word, he
dropped noiselessly on hands and knees to inch his way cautiously out of
the thicket.

I followed at his heels, marveling at his skill in threading the maze
with never a snapped twig to betray him. For though I have called him a
youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and was
well upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he could
be as lithe and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy in approach and
tiger-strong to spring.

In due time our creeping progress brought us out of the thicket on the
brink of the higher creek bank. Just here the stream ran in a shallow
ravine with shelving banks of clay, and on its hither margin was a bit
of grassy intervale big enough for a horse to roll upon. Though it was
sadly out of season, the carcass of a deer, fresh killed, hung upon a
branch of the nearest tree, with a rifle leaning against the trunk as if
to guard it. In the middle of the bit of sward a tiny camp-fire burned;
and at the fire, squatting with their backs to us and each toasting a
cut of the deer's meat on a forked stick, were two men.

One of these men would pass by courtesy as a white. His hunting-shirt
and leggings were of deer skin, well grimed and greasy, with leather
fringes at the seams of leg and sleeve. For all the summer heat, he wore
a cap fashioned of raccoon-skin with the fur on; and for this great cap
his iron-gray hair, matted and unkempt, served as a fringe to keep the
other tasselings in countenance. The hunting-shirt was belted at the
waist, and in the belt was thrust a sheathless knife huge enough to
serve a butcher's purpose. From two leather thongs crossed upon his
shoulders hung the powder-horn and bullet-pouch; and these, with the
knife and rifle, summed up his accoutrements.

The other was a red man, and his attire was simpler. Like all our
southern Indians, he went naked to the waist; but the savage's love of
ornament showed forth in the fringe of colored porcupine quills on his
leggings and in his raven hair bestuck with feathers. For arms he had an
arsenal in his belt; two great pistols, a tomahawk, and the
scalping-knife, this last smaller than the white man's carving tool, but
far more vicious looking.

For a moment or two we crouched irresolute on the brink of the ravine,
neither of us recognizing the two below. Then my young rashling must
needs let out a yell.

"Now, by all that's lucky!" he cried, and would have leaped to his feet