The next instant Susannah spoke, in a tone that woke the echoes of the forest, and the eye of the scout noted the savage as he bit the dust.
“Well done, my girl,” he said, caressingly. “Now we’ll be going. By that ’ere yell, there’s a hull snarl of ’em ahint. Well, let ’em come on if they want to. They’ll get a tussle afore they get you and I into their clutches.”
Suiting the action to the word, the scout went on again, reloading his rifle as he went; while each moment the dusk of evening grew in the forest, telling him that the end of his race and the night were near at hand.
Ever and anon as he paused for a moment, he could hear the savages coming on behind him, but he had no fear of their overtaking him. In a few minutes more he would be able to turn aside and let them go on in the wild pursuit, while he could stand quietly by and laugh at the trick he was playing upon them.
Deeper and deeper grew the shadows in the forest, and at last the darkness was so well down that it was all that he could do with his eyes, accustomed to the task, to mark the footsteps he was leaving behind him.
The moment had come for him to give them the slip.
Summoning to his aid all the energies he possessed, he bounded forward with the speed of the wind for some fifty rods on the course he had been following.
Here he paused, and listened for a few moments.
As he expected, there was no sound of the footsteps of his pursuers.
Assured of this, he turned abruptly to the right, and, after keeping this course for a few minutes, once more set his face in the direction from which he had come.