CHAPTER VI.
THE BOWLDER BULLETS.
Steadily Boone pressed on through the tangled forest, with the yells of the Osage warriors ringing clearly in his ears, and something of the fire of his younger days gleamed in his blue eyes and brought a flush to his bronzed cheek, as he felt himself once more pitted against the dusky heathen who had dealt him so many and bitter blows.
Close in his footsteps trod young Abel Dare, sullenly fleeing from the enemies he longed to turn upon and rend in his furious hatred. But the Wood King had gained a strange ascendancy over his mind, and he obeyed, though with an ill grace.
At the time he had given the word to separate, Boone diverged slightly to the right hand, bidding Dare follow him closely. And now they sped forward over the tangled ground with all the speed possible, while the Osages yelped like eager hounds close at his heels.
Thoroughly acquainted with the surrounding country, Boone sought to direct his course so as to avoid a serious obstacle that lay before them; but even under the best auspices it is difficult to keep a straight course through a thick wood; little wonder then that their rapid flight through the darkness caused him to err in his calculations.
Half an hour after leaving the Osage village, the veteran made this discovery, and a feeling of anxiety agitated his mind, more for the young man, who trusted in his skill and experience, than for himself. As was the case with Lightfoot, a few hours later, he was running headlong into a trap. Nor could he hope to shun it by turning aside. The pursuers were too near for that.
Then a cry burst from his lips. Like a revelation, there flashed upon him a scene from the past: a deep, narrow gorge, yet too wide for man to cross it by leaping—a hunter standing upon the verge, peering downward, supporting himself by a stout grape-vine that dangled from the horizontal limb of the gnarled elm tree. By its aid an active man could cross the ravine.
Calling upon Dare to increase his exertions, Boone darted forward with the speed of a hunted deer through the now less dense forest. The trees grew less thickly, the ground more broken, strewn with flinty bowlders. Through the clear moonlight could be seen distant hills rising darkly, with their covering of trees, or bleak and bare, their rocky summits scarce affording subsistence for a scant growth of shriveled, prematurely-growing grass.
True to his latter calculation, the Wood King reached the gorge at a point only a few steps from the vine-wreathed elm tree, and then one stroke of his keen knife severed the pendent grape-vine close to its root. Clutching this, he ran back a few paces, crying out to Dare as he did so: