"I'm downright ashamed of ye, lad. You should have been long enough in the woods by this time to know smoke when you see it. Why, there it is curling up from the trees in a dozen—ay, in a score of places. There must be hundreds of men out scouting or camping in them woods."
Harold looked fixedly again at the forests, but even now he could not detect the signs which were so plain to the scout.
"You may call me as blind as a bat, Peter," he said with a laugh, "but I can see nothing. Looking hard I imagine I can see a light mist here and there, but I believe it is nothing but fancy."
"It's clear enough to me, lad, and to the redskins. What do you say, chief?"
"Too much men," the Seneca replied sententiously.
For another minute or two he and Peter stood watching the forest, and then in a few words consulted together as to the best line to follow to avoid meeting the foe who, to their eyes, swarmed in the forest.
"It's mighty lucky," the hunter said as they turned to descend the hill, which was covered with trees to its very summit, "that they're white men and not redskins out in the woods, there. I don't say that there's not many frontiersmen who know the way of the woods as well as the redskins. I do myself, and when it comes to fighting we can lick 'em on their own ground; but in scouting we aint nowhere—not the best of us. The redskin seems to have an instinct more like that of an animal than a man. I don't say as he can smell a man a mile off as a dog can do, but he seems to know when the enemy's about; his ears can hear noises which we can't; his eyes see marks on the ground when the keenest-sighted white man sees nothing. If that wood was as full of redskins as it is of whites to-day, our sculps wouldn't be worth a charge of powder."
"You are not going to follow the shores of the lake, I suppose?" Harold asked.
"No," Peter said. "They'll be as thick as peas down there, watching for the first sight of our fleet. No, we must just keep through the woods and be as still and as silent as if the trees had ears. You'd best look to the priming of yer piece before we goes further, for it's likely enough you'll have to use it before the day's done, and a miss-fire might cost you yer life. Tell that nigger of yourn that he's not to open his mouth again till I gives him leave."
With a long stealthy tread the party descended the mountain and took their way through the woods. Every hundred yards or so they stopped and listened intently. When any noise, even of the slightest kind, was heard, all dropped to the ground until the chief had scouted round and discovered the way was clear. Once or twice they heard the sound of men's voices and a distant laugh, but they passed on without seeing those who uttered them.