“I don’t believe I can walk very far yet,” answered Dave despondently. “My knee feels as stiff as if it was in a vise.”
“Perhaps I had better scout around a little, leaving you here. It is barely possible I may run across some of the others and find out what became of your cousin.”
“Then go, by all means!” cried Dave. “You cannot do me a greater favor than to find Henry.”
“But you must lay low, lad. The Injuns may be closer nor you think.”
“I will keep quiet. But I’d like to have a drink before you go,” answered the young soldier.
Some water was obtained, and he gulped it down eagerly, and bathed his sprained knee with what remained. Then cautioning him once more, Raymond left him, the backwoodsman setting off in the direction of the lake front.
If the night had seemed lonely, the time now was doubly so to Dave, who could do nothing but nurse his bruise and keep a lookout for a possible enemy. His thoughts traveled constantly to his cousin, and he wondered if Raymond would bring in any news of Henry.
“He ought to learn something,” he told himself over and over. “I am sure I could if I was in his place.”
Nine o’clock came and then ten o’clock, and still the silence of the forest remained unbroken save for the occasional song of some distant bird, and the buzzing of bees around an adjacent bee-tree. The nearness of this bee-tree put Dave in mind of that discovered by his uncle and himself while on their trip to Annapolis some years before. What great changes had occurred since that time!
“This war has been an awful thing, and I shall be glad when it is at an end,” he thought. “But unless we win, there will be trouble with the Indians and the French for years and years to come.”