ce, soothed by the sweet odors of the night.

I awoke suddenly. I had been dreaming of Nick Temple and Temple Bow, and
my father coming back to me there with a great gash in his shoulder like
Weldon's. I lay for a moment dazed by the transition, staring through
the gray light. Then I sat up, the soft stamping and snorting of the
horses in my ears. The sorrel mare had her nose high, her tail
twitching, but there was no other sound in the leafy wilderness. With a
bound of returning sense I looked for Weldon. He had fallen asleep on
the bank above, his body dropped across the trunk of the oak. I leaped
on the trunk and made my way along it, stepping over him, until I reached
and hid myself in the great roots of the tree on the bank above. The
cold shiver of the dawn was in my body as I waited and listened. Should
I wake Tom? The vast forest was silent, and yet in its shadowy depths my
imagination drew moving forms. I hesitated.

The light grew: the boles of the trees came out, one by one, through the
purple. The tangled mass down the creek took on a shade of green, and a
faint breath came from the southward. The sorrel mare sniffed it, and
stamped. Then silence again,--a long silence. Could it be that the cane
moved in the thicket? Or had my eyes deceived me? I stared so hard that
it seemed to rustle all over. Perhaps some deer were feeding there, for
it was no unusual thing, when we rose in the morning, to hear the whistle
of a startled doe near our camping ground. I was thoroughly frightened
now,--and yet I had the speculative Scotch mind. The thicket was some
one hundred and fifty yards above, and on the flooded lands at a bend.
If there were Indians in it, they could not see the sleeping forms of our
party under me because of a bend in the stream. They might have seen me,
though I had kept very still in the twisted roots of the oak, and now I
was cramped. If Indians were there, they could determine our position
well enough by the occasional stamping and snorting of the horses. And
this made my fear more probable, for I had heard that horses and cattle
often warned pioneers of the presence of redskins.

Another thing: if they were a small party, they would probably seek to
surprise us by coming out of the cane into the creek bed above the bend,
and stalk down the creek. If a large band, they would surround and
overpower us. I drew the conclusion that it must be a small party--if a
party at all. And I would have given a