"We've shorely left the Garden o' Eden, Henry," said the shiftless one. "They didn't do sech things ez these thar in Adam or Eve's times, nor in ourn. We come purty nigh walkin' plum' into a trap."
"And we've got to shake 'em off. We mustn't run toward the stone hollow, because that would merely draw 'em down on all of us. We must lead away to the west again, Sol."
"You're right, Henry, but that confounded creek's in the way. I kin see it off on the left an' I notice that it's growin' wider an' deeper, ez it flows on to the Ohio. They've got us hemmed in ag'inst it."
"But Sol, they'll have to do a lot before they catch such as you and me."
"That's so, Henry. I guess we're right hard to ketch. I'm proud to be a fugitive 'long o' you."
Henry glanced back and saw the long line of dusky figures following them through woods over hills and across valleys with all the tenacity of a pack of wolves pursuing a deer. He knew that they would hang on to the last, and while he was sure that he and Shif'less Sol could distance them, if they used their utmost speed, he was in continuous apprehension lest they stir up some other band or at least stray warriors, as the forest was full of them. The creek was a bar holding them to an almost straight line. It was wide and too deep except for swimming, rising almost to the proportions of a river. Henry calculated too that the creek did not flow far west of their hollow in the rock, and thus they were forced, despite their wishes, to run toward the very place they wished to avoid.
"We've certainly had bad luck," he said to Sol, "and I think we've stirred up a regular hornet's nest. Hark to that!"
From their right came a swelling war whoop with the ferocious whining note at the end, and the eyes of the two fugitives met. Each, despite the dark, could read the alarm in the face of the other. They had not run out of the trap. Instead the trap was about to be sprung upon them. With the unfordable stream on one side of them, an Indian band on the other, and an Indian band behind them their case was indeed serious. The transition from the Garden of Eden to a world of danger was sudden and complete.
The band in the rear gave answer to the cry of their comrades in the west, and Henry and the shiftless one had never before heard a whoop so full of exultation and ferocity. Henry understood it as truly as if it had been spoken in words. It said that the fugitives were surely theirs, that they would be caught very soon, that they would be given to the torture and that all the warriors should see the flames lick around their bare bodies.
A red mist appeared before the eyes of Henry. The wonderful peace, and the kindness toward all things that had enwrapped him, as he lay all day long in the happy valley, were gone. Instead his veins were flushed with anger. The warriors would exult over the torture and death of his comrades and himself. Well, he would show them that a man could not be burnt at the stake, until he was caught, and it was easy to exult too soon.