It needed very small indications to point out to these astute frontiersmen the position of affairs round them. As well as if he had been at the side of the Indian chief, Kenton knew that a circle of savages was lying round the fort, some near, some far, according to the cover. He felt certain that the Shawnees on Ruby’s trail had arrived long before and that the Indian besiegers were watching for his arrival. Their dead silence argued that.
The warrior who had just fired was probably young, and ambitious of slaying a “Big-Knife.” What he had seen to fire at was uncertain, but Kenton knew that some cunning old hand would very soon be down upon his post to scold him for his carelessness.
It was therefore with senses morbidly alive to external objects that the borderer crept noiselessly toward the foe.
He took care to feel every place with his hand before he dared to trust his weight upon it, and in this way it was fully twenty minutes ere he had traversed the hundred yards that separated him from the Indian line.
At last he judged himself there, and then he lay quite still and listened intently.
Presently, just as he had anticipated, there was a faint rustle of dry grass on his right, as if some one were coming cautiously toward him. He turned his head sharply and caught the outline of a figure on all fours not twenty feet off, by the bole of a tree.
The figure was stationary, and presently the low hoot of an owl resounded from it. The hoot was answered from the right and left, and the borderer found that he was in the very midst of his foes.
The creeping Indian moved on a little, and a second figure rose to meet it, about ten feet in front of Kenton.
It was the figure of the imprudent youngster.