He moved carefully along the side of the cliff down the river. It was steep footing, but it would be perhaps impossible to pass anywhere else, and he proceeded with slowness, lest he set a pebble rolling or make the bushes rattle. He reached the place where they had scrambled ashore after burning the flatboat and he paused there a moment. His mind returned to the two mysterious shots that had saved them. Could he have been mistaken in his surmise, and could it have been Shif'less Sol and Tom Ross or perhaps Long Jim who had fired the timely bullets?
He was not one to spend his time in guesses that could not be answered, and he resumed his advance, increasing his speed as the cliff became less precipitous. It was an average night, not a black protecting one, and he knew that he must practice great caution. He intended when further down to swim the river, but it was not yet safe to expose himself there, and he clung to the southern bank.
He soon had proof that all his caution was needed. He heard a soft footstep and quietly sank down in the bushes. A Miami sentinel passed within twenty feet of him, and the boy did not rise again until he was out of sight. Twenty yards further he saw another, and then the glow of lights came through the trees. He knew it to be an Indian camp fire, although the warriors themselves were hidden from him by a swell of the earth. But he felt an intense desire to see this fire, or rather those about it. It was a legitimate wish, as any information that he might obtain would be valuable for the return—and he intended to return.
He crept to a point near the crest of the swell, and then he lay very close, glad that the bushes there were so thick and that they hid him so well. Six men were coming and he recognized them. Two were white, Girty and Blackstaffe, and there were Yellow Panther, Red Eagle, Captain Pipe, the Delaware, and White Lightning, the great Timmendiquas of the Wyandots. They were talking in the Shawnee tongue, which he understood well, and despite all his experience and self-control, a tremor shook him.
They stopped near him and continued their conversation. Every word that they said reached the listener in the bush.
"The place was warned, as Ware said. There's no doubt of it," said Girty viciously, nodding toward the hill on which stood Fort Prescott. "His boast was true. Braxton Wyatt knows him. He was tossed by him into twenty feet of the Ohio. It must have been worth seeing."
Girty laughed. He could take a malignant pleasure in the misfortune of an ally. Henry also saw the white teeth of Timmendiquas gleam as his lips curved into a smile. But in him the appeal was to a sense of humor, not to venom. He seemed to have little malice in his nature.
"It is so," said Timmendiquas in Shawnee. "It was certainly the one called Ware, a bold youth, and powerful. It was wonderful the way in which he broke through our lines at the running of the gantlet and escaped. He must be a favorite of Manitou."
"Favorite of Manitou! It was his arms and legs that got him away," snarled Girty.
His tone was insolent, domineering, and the dark eyes of Timmendiquas were turned upon him.