You have learned enough about this boy to admit that he was bright and alert, and that when he moved through the woods he always kept his senses about him. Like his friend Will, he thought it best to pass slightly beyond the camp before approaching it, though for myself I cannot see the reason for such a course.
Instead, therefore, of taking the most direct route, he moved to the left, so that, when opposite to the Wyandots, he was really farther away from them than while on the ridge. The distance was such indeed that he failed to hear the signal of Will, who supposed it was loud enough to travel a long way through the wilderness.
Pausing for a moment, Jack carefully looked about him, and even among the tops of the trees. The only living thing which he saw was a huge rattlesnake, that was crawling by a stump a few yards away. Like the majority of mankind, the first prompting of the lad was to rush forward and kill the reptile. In fact, he started to do so.
Instantly the serpent twisted itself into a coil, and with its head rearing from the centre, shook its rattle as an invitation to attack. Jack could have easily shot off its head, and he would have been glad to do so, for it was an unusually large and repulsive pest, but to fire his gun at such a time would have been an imprudence for which there could be no excuse.
"I'll let you go," he said, looking steadily at it for a few seconds; "but it's well for you that I didn't meet you before I knew anything about this camp."
The crotalus species is easily killed, but this specimen, finding its invitation to a fight not accepted, unwound, and crawled off.
Seeing and hearing nothing, Jack began moving towards the camp, though, like his friends, he was unable to see anything of the smoke that was their guide when they halted on the crest of the ridge. He had travelled through the forest long enough, however, to keep his bearings, and he was sure that he was going in a straight line for the camp, which, he was almost equally sure, belonged to the Wyandot tribe of Indians.
"It will be odd if I find Hua-awa-oma there," he said to himself, while stealthily picking his way. "I wonder what he would say if I should walk up to him and offer my hand? I am afraid he wouldn't be so kind as he was a while ago."
The boy was stepping in this guarded manner, as wide awake as ever, when, like Will, his toe caught in one of the running vines close to the ground, and he stumbled forward. He did not fall, though he came very near doing so. His head was thrown forward and downward in his effort to check himself.
No accident could have been more fortunate for it saved Jack's life. At the very instant of stumbling he heard the twang of a bow-string, and the missile which was aimed at him, whizzed over his shoulder and was buried in the trunk of a tree beyond.