It may have been, indeed, most likely was, the very fact that always in the past they had come out of the most perilous difficulties without permanent injury, which made the two boys slow to appreciate the gravity of their present position—a position of the greatest danger; far from all human assistance and with all the Indians who hitherto had been their friends now turned against them.
The little house of logs perched on the eastern bluff directly above the river would no doubt have seemed a very lonesome spot and insecure enough to other eyes, as the boys approached it in the autumn twilight, but not so to them. With its surroundings of small but well cultivated fields in the valley below, its big, comfortable looking woodpile at the edge of the woods and the cheerful welcome of Neb and Phoebe, their two horses, whinnying their greeting from the rude log stable, it was a pleasure to them to be safely there once more.
It was home. The stout log walls would soon shut out the darkness and, they believed, the danger, holding them snug and warm with the firelight and the pleasant smell of their cooking supper within.
John looked after the horses at the barn while Kingdom built up the fire in the cabin and soon had the fish deliciously frying and several extremely generous slices of coarse corn bread toasting on the hearth. A pot of maple tea—(maple sugar boiled in water—an Indian drink) simmered from its hook above the blaze, and a bark tray of nuts, cracked and ready for dessert, was in waiting on the table.
“Better have everything shut tight,” suggested Ree as John came in.
“That’s what I’ve done,” was the answer, “not a knot-hole open. But—well, now that we are home and so jolly comfortable, does it not seem to you just as if Fishing Bird’s coming and all that he said was just some nasty dream and not really so at all? Does to me. I don’t forget it for more than a minute at a time, but I feel as if I’d wake up pretty soon and find I’d just been sleeping on my back.”
“Well, it’s too bad,” was the answer.
“We’ve got too much else to do to be bothered this way,” John returned.
“I’ve been thinking,” Ree went on, “that Captain Pipe may give that Seneca to understand a thing or two and prove to be our friend again, just when we most need him, as he has done more than once before. Still we’ve got to look alive every minute till the trouble’s over, and so you put the supper on the table, John, and I’ll just take a little look around the house and cast my eyes about the clearing for a minute.”