The tree-toads cried, and the crickets chirruped. The air seemed full of life. The owl—the minion of the night—came forth from his perch in the tree-trunk. The young moon, too, rising, cast its silver sheen over the forest.
Then again, suddenly, the voices of the night sunk into silence, for, forth from the hollow of the oak, that the three daring scouts had selected for their rendezvous, came the dark figure that but a few minutes before with stealthy steps had stolen beneath the leafy branches. It was evident that the secret of the hollow tree was known to another than the scouts.
Cautiously through the forest stole the dark form. The tree-toad hushed its cries; the cricket noiselessly crept to his hole; the owl peered forth from its cavity in the tree-trunk, and then with its great eyes shining with fear, shrunk back within the darkness of its lair, when it caught sight of the dark form that so silently glided amid the trees.
On went the dark form through the forest. All living things seemed to shrink from it in horror.
The moonbeams, slanting down and tinging the green of the forest top with rays of silvery light, fell upon the figure as it glided through a little opening in the woods.
The moonbeams defined the figure of a huge gray wolf, who walked erect like a man, and who had the face of a human. The dark form held in its paw an Indian tomahawk.
The moonbeams were gleaming upon the Wolf Demon, the terrible scourge of the Shawnee tribe.
On through the forest went the hideous form, almost following in the footsteps of the scout, Kenton, who had little idea of the terrible creature that lurked behind him.
Boone had selected the bank of the river as his pathway to the village of the Indians.
Carefully the ranger proceeded onward.