Carefully the old scout proceeded on his dangerous path.
Leaving the dead Indian where he had fallen, Boone again sought the shelter of the river’s bank.
Fortune favored the adventurer. No hostile Indian barred his way. Unobserved he reached the friendly shadows cast by the forest monarchs.
On the borders of the wood Boone halted for a moment and looked back on the Indian village, that nestled so peacefully by the bank of the rolling Scioto, bathed in the soft moonlight.
“Who could guess that yonder village contained a thousand red-skins thirsting for blood and slaughter?” exclaimed the old hunter, communing with himself; his gaze resting upon the quiet scene before him. The embers of the fires cast a crimson light on the wigwams and played in fantastic shadows along the plain.
“I’d better be moving,” muttered Boone; “first for the hollow oak; there I’ll probably meet Lark and Kenton. I’ll bet a big drink of corn-juice that nary one on ’em has been as fur into the Injun village as I have. I reckon I’m not over anxious to risk it ag’in. How the red devils would have danced around me ef they only got the opportunity to roast me a little.” And the old hunter chuckled at the thought. Yet even now he was far from being out of danger, but he thought not of it. In the forest, free, he thought himself a match for all the Shawnee nation.
With noiseless steps the hunter took his way through the wood.
Quickly, but carefully, he went onward. Not a stick cracked beneath his tread. A fox, intent on prey, could hardly have proceeded more noiselessly.
As the shadows of the forest deepened around the path of the woodman, he glanced nervously from side to side as if he expected that some hostile form would spring upon him from the darkness of the thicket; and yet it was no red warrior that he expected to see, no brawny chief, decked with the war-paint and wearing the moccasins of the Shawnee. No, the form he expected was that of a huge gray wolf that walked erect like a man, and carried in his paw the tomahawk of the Indian. A form more terrible than any feathered, tinctured chief; more to be dreaded than any red-skin who claimed the Ohio valley as his own.
On went the hunter, still glaring about him in the darkness; but the terrible Wolf Demon sprung not from the covert of the wood. If he lurked about the pathway of the scout, he kept himself concealed within the fastness of the forest.