Feeling the responsibility on him, young George acted like an old campaigner, using more care than seemed necessary at first; but he had felt quite sure from the beginning that they were near a party of Indian warriors, and he did not mean to betray himself and friends into their hands by any lack of caution. He was glad to see, after going a short distance down the slope, that there was an increase of undergrowth. This gave him a better chance to keep his body screened while approaching the camp.
"Whatever happens," was his thought, "it shan't be said that I was the cause of Jack and Will getting into trouble. If there are a party of Indians tramping through here, it is for no good, and the best thing we can do is to get back home as quick as we know how."
At the end of a quarter of an hour he thought he must be close to the camp. Since coming down into the valley he was unable to see the smoke that was in such plain sight when they were on top of the ridge, but he used his keen eyes and sense of hearing with a skill that an Indian scout would have found hard to surpass.
"It must be close at hand--sh!"
Sure enough, he had not gone five steps farther when he came in full view of the camp.
In the middle of a small open space a number of sticks had been piled together and kindled an hour or two before. This was plain, not only from the number of burnt-out embers and brands, but from the appearance of the smoke above the trees as already described.
On a fallen tree, near the fire, sat three Indian warriors, talking together in their low guttural voices. Another was in the act of stooping down and lighting his long-stemmed pipe, while a fifth was standing a few feet away, examining his rifle--this being all that were in sight.
Each was in his war paint, and, young as was George Burton, he was certain that they were but a fraction of the party that was in the woods bent on mischief.
"They must be Wyandots," he thought, forming this opinion from the story told by Jack of his encounter that morning; "and we must get home as fast as we can, and tell the folk."
Full of this purpose, he turned softly about to hasten back, when he found himself face to face with a gigantic and scowling Indian warrior!