-tee-ge-ous one o' 'em couldn't sleep 'cause a rose
leaf was doubled under him. That's me, Sol Hyde, all over ag'in. I'm a
pow'ful partickler person, with a delicate rearin' an' the instincts o'
luxury. How do you expect me to sleep with a thing like that pushed up
in the small o' my back. Git out!"

As he said 'Git out,' he threw the leaf from him, lay down again on his
woodland couch, and in two minutes was really and peacefully asleep.

"He is shorely won'erful," said Long Jim admiringly. "Think I'll try
that myself."

He was somewhat longer than the shiftless one in achieving the task, but
in ten minutes he, too, slept. Paul was at last able to do so in the
afternoon, when the sun grew warm, and at the coming of the night they
prepared to depart.

They traveled a full eight hours, by the stars and the moon, through a
country covered with dense forest. Twice they saw distant lights, once
to the south and once to the east, and they knew that they were the camp
fires of Indians, who feared no enemy here. But when dawn came there was
no sign of hostile fire or smoke, and they believed that they were now
well in advance of the Indian parties. They shot two wild turkeys from a
flock that was "gobbling" in the tall trees, announcing the coming of
the day, and cooked them at a fire that they built by the side of a
brook. After breakfast Henry and Tom Ross went forward a little to spy
out the land, and a half mile further on by the side of the brook they
saw two or three faint prints made by the human foot. They examined them
long and carefully.

"Made by white men," said Henry at last.

"Shorely," said Tom Ross.

"Now, I wonder who they can be," said Henry. "It's not the renegades,
because they would not leave the Indians."

"S'pose we go see," said Tom Ross.

The trail was faint and difficult to follow, but they managed to make it
out, and after another half mile they saw two men sitting by a small
camp fire under some trees. The fire was so situated that no one could
come within rifle shot of it without being discovered by those who built
it, and Henry knew that the two men sitting there had noticed him and
Ross.

But the strangers did not move. They went on, calmly eating pieces of
buffalo steak that they were broiling over the coals. Although nearly as
brown as Indians, they were undoubtedly white men. The features in both
cases were clearly Caucasian, and, also, in each case they were marked
and distinctiv