"Have a care," he continued. "I don't understand what makes the varmints so quiet."
"Because they are scared, as all of you were by the flatboat and its sail."
"The only one of us skeered was Simon," corrected the great pioneer, "and then he skeered us by the way he carried on."
"Well, any one of you would have been just as much frightened as he, and I suspect the rumpus he created had something to do with the panic of the Shawanoes; but you are right; it will not last long, and it may be over already."
The habit of caution to which all the rangers were trained asserted itself. Grasping their rifles firmly, they involuntarily assumed a crouching pose and stepped lightly forward, as if afraid the slightest footfall would betray them. They glanced to the right and left, and more than once fancied they discerned shadowy forms stealing here and there in the gloom.
It was natural, perhaps, that a different and somewhat peculiar feeling should influence the two families of settlers. They felt as if they would ignore the existence of enemies in their immediate neighborhood; they would forget that any danger of that nature ever threatened them at all, and devote their utmost energies to hurrying forward to the flatboat. They held their gaze in that direction, and tried to pierce the gloom and see nothing but the single object upon which their hope was fixed.
Mr. Ashbridge and his wife clasped a hand of Mabel between them. Mr. Altman and his wife clung to each other, while George Ashbridge had fallen slightly to the rear with Agnes, while the rangers seemed to straggle irregularly forward, as they had done when pushing through the woods, but, in truth, they were advancing in accordance with a well-defined idea of the best course to follow at this time.
Finley, Kenton and Boone held their places at the head, and the fugitives speedily reached the river side, where the unpleasant fact became apparent that the wind, which had been blowing so long and steadily, had dropped to a degree that it could no longer be of any help to them.