Although his rugged system rapidly threw off the nicotine poisoning, he was weak and dizzy. He gained a few hours sleep before morning, but was awake at the earliest streakings of light and started on his return.
Otto Relstaub's previous experience in the woods now served him well. He discovered that the war party, instead of continuing westward, were retrograding and doubling on their own trail. He suspected the true reason they were prospecting for a new site for their villages. He had judged from their actions that something of the kind was in their thoughts.
As the course of the lad lay in the same direction, he wisely chose to deviate until he was far off their trail, so as to avoid any risk of them.
Otto's deliverance from captivity was singular indeed, but he was too wise to consider it complete until certain that such was the case. He feared that Red Wolf or some of his comrades would return to the spot where he had been abandoned; and, discovering the trick, instantly pursue him.
He therefore devoted many hours to elaborate efforts to obliterate his own trail, or to shape it so that even a bloodhound could not track him. He crossed all the streams he could, wading long distances through the water where the depth was too great to permit his footprints to be seen. When he finally emerged, he often did so on the same side which he entered, perhaps repeating his maneuver once or twice before leaving the stream by the opposite bank.
This played havoc with Otto's garments, which were torn and injured until it looked doubtful whether they would last him through his journey. Sometimes, while walking where the water was only a little above his knees, he would abruptly step into that which was six or eight feet deep, but he always reached bottom.
During the first day, when the vigorous system of the fugitive demanded food, and he saw the chance of bringing down a wild turkey which trotted swiftly across his path, he refrained through fear that the report of his gun would betray him. He ate a few berries that seemed to have lived over from the preceding winter (the season being rather early for any thing of the kind to have grown since), chewed some tender buds, and lying down at night, thanked heaven he felt so well.
Reaching the bank of the river across which his friends had passed several times, he felt the opportunity for which he longed had come.
With much labor, he succeeded in constructing a raft sufficiently buoyant to float him without resting any part of his body in the water. Pushing this out into the stream, he drifted fully three miles, gradually working the support toward the further shore.
"Dere," he exclaimed, when he stepped out on land, "dey won't find my tracks if dey don't look all summer."