"Don't talk about dyin', man, while you've breath enough left to draw a pipe," impatiently muttered Boone. "Foller us, now, an' remember that a false step may end all. It's no fool of a game that we've got to play."
Lightfoot gave a grunt of displeasure, then led the way down the hillside. Taciturn himself, he saw little use in so many words.
Cautiously parting the bushes that almost met above the trail, he searched the level. A few hundred yards further on he paused, and again spoke to the old hunter in the Kickapoo dialect.
"What's the matter now?" anxiously asked Mordaunt.
"Nothin'; the chief thinks it's best that he should go on ahead to spy out the truth. As it is, we're goin' blindfold. We'll wait here ontil he comes back."
"But is it safe?"
"Nothin's safe when the varmints is up an' ragin' for white blood. But come—we may as well take to kiver."
Boone turned aside from the trail and sought a level space where the undergrowth was tolerably dense, though the trees were few. Here he stationed the trio, then crouched down beneath a bush nearer the trail.
Lightfoot had disappeared like some phantom shape, melting away amidst the gloom. He no longer followed the trail; even without the unmistakable guide in the broad glare of light, he well knew the position of the forest cabin. Toward this he was now pressing with the speed, the silence, the dexterity of a serpent.
He had nearly gained the edge of the Caughland clearing, when he suddenly paused. From behind there uprose a shrill, exultant yell from a full score of throats. It was the cry of the Osages, and proceeded from the crest of the hill near which he had parted from the white fugitives.