"Well, since you wish to come, dear girl, I will not gainsay you. But what thinks your chief about his darling courting all these dangers?"
"Little Poplar," the Indian replied, "is proud to see his sweetheart brave; and if she were not so brave, he could not love her half so much." And stooping, the noble chief kissed and kissed the maiden's forehead; and then, once, and very tenderly, her two red lips.
The pair now swiftly returned to the hollow, once again folded the tent, closed their hamper, saddled the horses, and struck out swiftly for the trail. They had practised eyes, and were soon convinced that both parties had gone by this route. Their horses were fairly fresh and they pushed on at high speed.
Their course lay over a long stretch of sodden marshes, brown with the russet of Indian pipes and the bronze of their leafage. Here and there a dry ridge lifted itself lazily out of the spongy flat, and afforded solid, buoyant footing. But a dull gray began to fall upon the plains. It was fog and they knew that less than half an hour of clear skies, and the sight of landscape, remained to them. So they sped on, now sinking deep in a mass of sodden liverwort, glistening in the most exquisite of green, again treading down a tangle of luscious, pale-yellow "bake-apples." The huge, noiseless mass soon reached the swampy plain; and it rolled as if upon wheels of floss, shutting out the sun and smothering the bluffs. The gloom was now so great that they could not see more than twenty paces on any hand, and every object in view seemed many times greater than its natural size, and distorted in shape. Miles and miles they went through swamp and tangle, till they heard the far-off, sullen roar of water. The land now also began to dip, and fifteen minutes' ride brought them to a low-lying region of swamp, sentinelled with dismal larches. Close at hand they heard the moaning of a slow stream; beyond was the muffled thunder of some tremendous waterfall. They were soon convinced that they were on the confines of the Styx River, a dreary, forbidding stream of ink-black water which wallowed through a larch swamp for many miles till it reached the face of a bold cliff down which its flood went booming with the sound of thunder. At every step now the horses sank almost to the knee; but as the trail was yet visible they pushed on, keeping close to the banks of the stream.
Beyond was a bluff of poplar and white oak, and as the riders passed round it, the gleam of a camp-fire about a quarter of a mile distant shone through the trees.
"Hist; here they are. We shall go behind this clump and pitch our tent; then we can see how affairs stand."
The horses were corralled, the tent pitched, a fire lighted; and Julie was busy breaking branches for pillows. Annette prepared the supper.
"What is your next step, my ingenious hero mistress?"
"To steal up near the camp-fire and see to which party it belongs; or whether the worst has happened." Her fingers trembled a little as she ate; but her heart was as brave as a lion's.
"Take your pistol, Julie, and let us go." The night was pitchy dark, although the fog had rolled away; for the moon had not yet risen, and no light came from the few feeble stars that were out. Over swamp and tangle, across bare marsh, and through dense wood they went, lightly as a pair of fawns, till the warm, ruddy glare of the strange camp-fire shone on their faces.