“I don’t think he’s dead,” said Braxton Wyatt. “I don’t know why, but I believe I understand him better than any of you do. I tell you he’s even stronger and more resourceful than you suppose! Look how often he has escaped us, when we were sure we held him fast! He’d find a way to live in the big freeze, or anywhere. I’ve an idea that he’s back up there by the lake somewhere, and that the trail the warriors found was that of another of the five, perhaps the traces of the fellow Shif’less Sol.”
Henry’s pulse leaped again, now with joy. The shiftless one had not been taken nor slain, and doubtless none of the others either, or they would have referred to it. But he waited to hear more, and not a dead leaf nor a twig stirred in the thicket, he was so still.
“It seems strange,” said Blackstaffe, thoughtfully, “that we have not been able to take him, when more than a thousand warriors were in the hunt, carried on without stopping, except during the big snow and the big freeze. And the warriors are the best in the west, men who can come pretty near seeing a trail through the air, men without fear. It almost seems to me that there’s been something miraculous about it.”
Then one of the chiefs spoke for the first time, and it was Yellow Panther, the Miami.
“Blackstaffe has spoken the truth,” he said. “Ware is helped by evil spirits, spirits evil to us, else he could not have slipped from our traps so often. He has powerful medicine that calls them to his aid when danger surrounds him.”
Yellow Panther spoke with all the gravity and earnestness that became a great Miami chief, and, as he finished, he looked up at the skies from which the fugitive had summoned spirits to his help. The great Shawnee chief, Red Eagle, standing by his side, nodded in emphatic confirmation. Henry felt a peculiar quiver run through his blood. Had he really received miraculous help, as the two chiefs thought? Lying there in such a place at such a time there was much to make him think as they did.
“We’ve spread a mighty net, and we’ve caught nothing,” said Braxton Wyatt, deep disappointment showing in his tone. “We’ve not only failed to get the leader of the five, but we’ve failed to take a single one of them.”
Now Henry’s heart gave a great leap. He had inferred that all of his comrades were yet safe, but here was positive proof in the words of Wyatt. Why had he ever feared? He might have known that when he drew off the Indian power they would be able to take care of themselves.
“I think,” said Blackstaffe, “that we’d better continue our march to the south, and also keep a large force in the north. If we don’t stumble upon him in a week or two our chance will be gone, at least until next spring. All the wild fowl flew south very early and the old men and women of the tribes have foretold the longest and hardest winter in two generations. Is it not so, Yellow Panther?”
“The cold will be so great that all the warriors will have to seek their wigwams,” replied the Miami chief, “and they will stay there many days and nights, hanging over the fires. The war trail will be deserted and the Ice King will rule over the forest.”