Our meeting-place was a grove on the bank of a creek, one of the tributaries of the Mohawk. We reached it without observation, and lay in concealment most of the day, starting again in the late afternoon and moving warily through the forest, following no particular course, but addressing ourselves rather to the effacement of all evidence of our passage.
We discovered nothing, and the next day and many others went by with no better luck. Sometimes we encountered the slots of deer or bear, and the woodcraft of my comrades would be baffled temporarily until they had proved beyond doubt that the trace was not used by human feet. Once we came upon signs of old encampments, and diligently scouted the vicinity, only to be convinced they were the relics of some casual hunting-party.
Our provisions were exhausted, and we were compelled to live from hand to mouth upon such game as Ta-wan-ne-ars could snare or kill with his tomahawk—and certes he was wondrous proficient in both arts. But we kept on, bearing always eastward and quartering the country in every direction. Game there was in plenty, sure testimony that man seldom came here; dense underbrush linked the towering trunks; there was not so much as a footprint in hundreds of square miles to reveal human occupancy.
Yet in the very midst of this deserted wilderness we came upon what we sought. We had abandoned the headwaters of the Mohawk and were following one of its middle branches, a shallow stream with pebbly, shelving banks, wading close inshore so as not to disturb the close-growing shrubbery. We all saw it simultaneously—a tattered, weather-stained fragment of canvas, caught on a snag in the current. I fished it out with my musket-barrel.
"A pack-cofer," declared Peter immediately.
"And safely identified," I added, putting my finger on an unmistakable thistle in green paint with three-quarters of a letter "M" above it.
A mile farther on Ta-wan-ne-ars exclaimed and pointed upward to the trunk of a tall elm. Partly shaded by the foliage of the lower boughs a deep blaze was revealed in the bark.
We waded ashore and investigated. The underbrush was as thick as elsewhere, but presently Peter gave a heave with his bull-like shoulders and a whole section of growths, which had been laced together with vines on a backing of boughs, lifted gate-fashion. Beyond stretched a narrow alley, whose carpet of grass showed it to be seldom traveled.
"If this be not the Doom Trail 'tis worth a look none the less," I whispered.
Peter nodded, and slipped through the opening. I followed him, and Ta-wan-ne-ars brought up the rear.