"But we can get one," said Henry significantly.
"If you want a thing, jest go an' git it," said Shif'less Sol. "I remember once when I wuz a leetle bit o' a boy back in the East, I hankered terribly after some hickory nuts that I knowed wuz in a grove about a mile from our house. I suffered days an' days o' anguish fur them hickory nuts, wishin' mighty bad all the time that I had 'em. At the end o' two weeks I walked over an' got 'em, an' my sufferin' stopped off short."
"That's just what we mean to do about our boat, step over and get it," said Henry laughing. But he did not divulge his plan and the others were content to wait for the event.
As Henry had predicted, the Spanish camp broke up the following morning, and Alvarez and his force took up a march almost due eastward. They traveled in an easy fashion, and showed no signs of apprehension, Alvarez deeming that fifty well-armed men were not in any danger from wandering tribes. He did not know that five resolute borderers were following closely behind him, even looking into his camp at night, and knowing every important thing that he did. Braxton Wyatt may have suspected it, but he said nothing, aware that it could not be prevented.
The five were well prepared. They carried a large supply of ammunition, a blanket each, and jerked meat. If their food supplies gave out there was the forest swarming with game, and they knew that it swarmed in the same fashion all the way down to New Orleans. They would camp at sunset three or four miles from the Spaniards, keeping watch the night through, and in the morning it was easy enough to take up the trail of Alvarez and his men, which, to their experienced eyes, was like a high road leading through the forest.
One evening just as the sun was setting Henry parted some twining bushes and looked over a cliff. The others came to his side and they, too, looked as he was looking.
At their very feet lay the mighty Mississippi. They had seen it before, but it was never so impressive as now. Great at any time it was in spring flood, rolling a vast, yellow current down toward the Gulf. The waters overflowed on the low, eastern shore, and it was so far across that they could not see the further bank in the shadowed evening. The setting sun, nevertheless, lighted up the middle of the current with blood-red gleams, and the five gazed with a certain awe at the mighty stream, as it flowed ever onward. It was the highly imaginative Paul who was impressed the most.
"We know where it goes to," he said, "but I wonder where it comes from."
Henry waved his hand vaguely toward the North.
"Up there somewhere," he said, "a thousand miles from here, or maybe two thousand. Nobody can tell."