ir
disregard of him. Perhaps his presence for a night, and the fact that he
had been harmless, removed their fear of him.

He rose to his knees, and then suddenly sank back again. He had caught
the gleam of red feathers in the forest to the west, and he knew they
were in the scalplock of a Shawnee. Raising his head cautiously he saw
several more. It was a small band passing toward the north. But he had
too much experience to imagine that they were chance travelers. Beyond a
doubt they were a part of Red Eagle's army, and that army had come up in
the night and had surrounded him.

He lay back and listened. An Indian call arose in the west and another
in the east, and then they came from north and south and points between.
They were on all sides of him and he had been trapped as he slept. He
saw that the danger was the most formidable he had yet encountered, but
he did not despair. It was characteristic of him that when there seemed
to be no hope, he yet had hope, and plenty of it. His heart beat a
little faster, but he lay quiet in his blanket, taking thought with
himself.

He had been aided before by storms, but there was not the remotest
chance now of one. The sun was rising in the full splendor of an early
autumn morning, and the thin, clear air had the brightness of silver.
The blue skies held not a single cloud. Far over his head a flock of
wild fowl in arrow formation flew southward, and for the moment they
expressed to him, as he lay in the snare, the very quintessence of
freedom. But he spent no time in vain longings. His eyes came back to
the earth and that which surrounded him. Once more he caught the gleam
of feathers in the forest and he was sure that the line about the
prairie was now continuous.

He must find a way through that line, and he poured all his mind upon
one point. When one thinks for life, one thinks fast and hard.
Stratagem after stratagem flitted before him, to be cast aside one after
another. Meanwhile the buffaloes were stirring more and more, and some
of them began to nip at the dry grass of the prairie, but the big black
bull on the little ridge remained crouched and motionless. He was not
fifteen feet away and between him and Henry lay fragments of dead wood
which had been blown from the forest by some old wind. His eyes alighted
upon them idly, but remained there in interest, and then, in a sudden
burst of intuition, came his plan. Hesitating not a single instant, he
prepared for it