"Don't shoot," said Kenton. "Whatever happens—don't shoot—mind that—don't shoot!"
Then—from the canebrake on three sides of the clearing sprang the nimble-footed savages who had teased and outrun their horse. The painted bodies closed across the entrance to the ford. Paralyzed with fear, the sweating horse crouched.
The ears of Kenton and Doby were deafened with war-whoops, their nostrils sickened by dangling scalps. A horrid threatening dance swung round them. Tomahawks hurled past them. Color and noise, stench and motion, caught them in a hideous vortex. Each savage gibed at the boy's painted talisman, but each obeyed its message. They did not touch him.
Doby did not scream—he could not. Kenton never moved, resistance was futile. In a great swoop the Indians bore down upon them. They were covered with a shower of blue-jay feathers thrown by murderous fingers as with wild gestures and wilder laughter the Indians vanished into the canebrake to follow the buffalo north for more profitable hunting.
Surprised Boonesboro did not know what to make of the flurry. The sentries halloed from the "flankers," and the Long Hunters, who had never thought to see them again, swung wide the gates, and Kenton and Doby swam across to Boonesboro—the end of their trail.
VI
LEFT HIND FOOT
A First Survey for the Underground Railway