“I’ll find the trail easy enough, and I’ll satisfy myself they are still making toward the Ohio or have swung back,” I assured him. “While I’m gone keep the young men in the woods and post sentinels. Don’t get careless. Don’t let the children wander from the cabins. I’m free to tell you, Davis, that I don’t believe for a second that you’ve seen the last of Black Hoof and his men. Have all those living in the outlying cabins use the fort to-night.”
After reaching the woods, I turned and looked back. Dale was standing in the doorway with one hand resting on the shoulder of John Ward. Ward was talking to Patsy, whose dainty figure could not be disguised by the coarse linsey gown.
The man Ward must have lost some of his taciturnity, for the girl was laughing gaily at whatever he was saying. I observed that Dale was still feeling very important in his rôle of protector, for as he stepped from the doorway he walked with a swagger. Well, God give that he was right and that the menace had passed from Howard’s Creek.
I found the trail where it turned back toward Tygart’s Valley, even as John Ward had reported, and followed it up the Greenbriar. The country here was very fertile on both sides of the river and would make rich farms should the danger from the Indians ever permit it to be settled. Farther back from the river on each hand the country was broken and mountainous and afforded excellent hiding-places for large bodies of Indians, as only rattlesnakes, copperheads, wolves and wildcats lived there.
My mood was equal to overdaring, and all because of Patsy Dale. When the sun swung into its western arc I halted where a large number of warriors had broken their fast. I ate some food and pushed on. After two miles of travel I came to a branching of the trail. Two of the band had turned off to the northeast. My interest instantly shifted from the main trail to the smaller one, for I assumed the two were scouting some particular neighborhood, and that by following it I would learn the object of their attention and be enabled to give warning.
That done, the footing would lead me back to the main band. The signs were few and barely sufficient to allow me to keep up the pursuit. It was not until I came to a spring, the overflow of which had made muck of the ground, that I was afforded an opportunity to inspect the two sets of tracks. One set was made by moccasins almost as small as those I had given to Patricia Dale.
But why a squaw on a war-path? It was very puzzling. From the amount of moisture already seeped into the tracks I estimated the two of them had stood there within thirty minutes. My pursuit became more cautious. Not more than twenty rods from the spring I came to a trail swinging in from the east, as shown by a broken vine and a bent bush.
The newcomer had moved carelessly and had fallen in behind the two Indians. I stuck to the trail until the diminished sunlight warned me it would soon be too dark to continue. Then I caught a whiff of burning wood and in ten minutes I was reconnoitering a tiny glade.
My first glance took in a small fire; my second glance dwelt upon a scene that sent me into the open on the jump. An Indian sat at the foot of a walnut-tree, his legs crossed and his empty hands hanging over his knees. At one side crouched a squaw, her long hair falling on each side of her face and hiding her profile. In a direct line between me and the warrior stood Shelby Cousin, his rifle bearing on the warrior.
My step caused him to turn, expecting to behold another native. The man on the ground made no attempt to take advantage of the interruption; and in the next second Cousin’s long double-barrel rifle was again aiming at the painted chest.