Meantime Queen Esther swept on with her train of warriors into the forest. A savage ran before her horse, searching out the trail with his keen eyes. He was one of the Indians that had followed Brant from the Hall. As she rode along, Queen Esther questioned this man in a cautious voice till she had gathered all the information he possessed.
“So you took shelter in the deep cut, and he was lost? Wheel to the left; there is a shorter cut—they will return to the Hall. On!”
Quick and sinuous as a serpent might alter his course, the train of savages swept on one side, and darted off in a run, following their stern leader. For a full hour they kept forward, steady, silent, and swift, threading the wilderness as a flash of lightning cuts through a storm cloud.
“Hist!”
It was the Indian scout who came running back with one hand uplifted.
“Hist—hist!” The word ran like a serpent’s hiss through the whole train, and every moccasin rested in its track.
Queen Esther dismounted, and a savage tied her horse to a tree. Again that low hiss ran through the line, and it swept forward. Scarcely a branch swayed, scarcely a stick of brushwood crackled: the wind sighing in the tree-tops made a louder noise than all that band of fierce human beings.
Crash, tramp, crash—the sound which the scout had detected came sharp and clear now. Hoofs beat the turf, oaths rang on the air. The rush of a quick progress swept back louder and louder. In the oath, Queen Esther detected the voice of Butler.
“Ha!” she said, sharply, “he is alive. Faster, faster; but more silently. Are your rifles ready?”
She was answered by the sharp click of flints. Again that silent sweep of human beings. They moved more boldly now for the close beat of hoofs bore down the faint noise of their moccasins.