"Don't any of you do too much talkin'," said Silent Tom. "Injuns hear pow'ful well, an' many a feller hez been caught in an ambush, an' hez lost his scalp jest 'cause he would go along sayin' idle words that told the Injuns whar he wuz, when he might hev walked away safe without thar ever knowin' he wuz within a thousand miles uv them."
"An' be mighty particular about your cookin'," said Long Jim. "Many a good man hez fell sick an' died, jest 'cause his grub wuzn't fixed eggzackly right. An' when you light your fires fur ven'son an' buffalo steaks be shore thar ain't too much smoke. More than once smoke hez brought the savages down on people. Cookin' here in the woods is not cookin' only, it's also a delicate an' bee-yu-ti-ful art that saves men's lives when it's done right, by not leadin' Shawnees, Wyandots an' other ferocious warriors down upon 'em."
Henry promised every one of the three to follow his advice religiously, and there was moisture in his and Paul's eyes when they caught the last view of them standing upon the bank and waving farewell. The next instant they were hidden by a curve of the shore, and then Henry said:
"It's almost like losing one's right arm to leave those three behind. I don't feel complete without them."
"Nor do I," said Paul. "I believe they were giving us all that advice partly to hide their emotion."
"Undoubtedly they were," said Mr. Pennypacker in a judicial tone, "and I wish to add that I do not know three finer characters, somewhat eccentric perhaps, but with hearts in the right place, and with sound heads on strong shoulders. They are like some ancient classic figures of whom I have read, and they are fortunate, too, to live in the right time and right place for them."
They made a safe passage over a stretch of the Ohio and then turned up the tributary river, rowing mostly, as Shif'less Sol had suggested, by night, and hiding their canoe and themselves by day. It was not difficult to find a covert as the banks along the smaller river were nearly always overhung by dense foliage, and often thick cane and bushes grew well into the water's edge. Here they would stop when the sun was brightest, and sometimes the heat was so great that not refuge from danger alone made them glad to lie by when the golden rays came vertically. Then they would make themselves as comfortable as possible in the boat and bearing Silent Tom's injunction in mind, talk in very low tones, if they talked at all. But oftenest two of them slept while the third watched.
They had been three days upon the tributary when it was Henry who happened to be watching. Both Paul and the teacher slumbered very soundly. Paul lay at the stern of the boat and Mr. Pennypacker in the middle. Henry was in the prow, sitting at ease with his rifle across his knees. The boat was amid a tall growth of canes, the stalks and blades rising a full ten feet above their heads, and hiding them completely. Henry had been watching the surface of the river, but at last the action grew wholly mechanical. Had anything appeared there he would have seen it, but his thoughts were elsewhere. His whole life, since he had arrived, a boy of fifteen, in the Kentucky wilderness, was passing before him in a series of pictures, vivid and wonderful, standing out like reality itself. He was in a sort of twilight midway between the daylight and a dream, and it seemed to him once more that Providence had kept a special watch over his comrades and himself. How else could they have escaped so many dangers? How else could fortune have turned to their side, when the last chance seemed gone? No skill, even when it seemed almost superhuman, could have dragged them back from the pit of death. He felt with all the power of conviction that a great mission had been given to them, and that they had been spared again and again that they might complete it.
While he yet watched and saw, he visited a misty world. The wind had risen and out of the dense foliage above him came its song upon the stalks and blades of the cane. A low note at first, it swelled into triumph, and it sounded clearly in his ear, bar on bar. He did not have the power to move, as he listened then to the hidden voice. His blood leaped and a deep sense of awe, and of the power of the unknown swept over him. But he was not afraid. Rather he shared in the triumph that was expressed so clearly in the mystic song.
The note swelled, touched upon its highest note and then died slowly away in fall after fall, until it came in a soft echo and then the echo itself was still. Henry returned to the world of reality with every sense vivid and alert. He heard the wind blowing in the cane and nothing more. The surface of the river rippled lightly in the breeze, but neither friend nor enemy passed there. The stream was as lonely and desolate as if man had never come. He shook himself a little, but the spiritual exaltation, born of the song and the misty region that he had visited, remained.