The men were cutting down saplings to make place for a camp. It was their intention to remain, going back under the cover of night to get food and blankets from the houses, if they were not pillaged and burned, going back in any case to bury their dead at the first streak of dawn.
The Danite turned to Susannah. "I guess, ma'am, neither you nor I have got any business to take us back, and there's enough of the brothers here to do the work."
Susannah went on with the young man through hour after hour of the afternoon farther and farther into the unknown fastnesses of the wood. They left behind them the low thicket of second growth, and penetrated into an uncleared Missouri forest.
CHAPTER XII.
All the powers of the young Danite were strung by excitement into the fiercest vitality, and he thought that physical fatigue was the best medicine for Susannah's mind. Why he had accepted the work of saving her as part of his mission of Mormon defence he did not ask himself. In him, as in many athletes, thought and action seemed one. He acted because he acted; he knew no other reason.
In the middle of the night Susannah woke up. The stars glimmered above the trees; she was lying on a heap of autumn leaves wrapped in the blanket. Sitting up, she remembered slowly the events of the preceding day.
Her movement had caused another movement at some distance. The Danite, sleeping on the alert like soldier or huntsman, was roused by the first sound she made, and when she continued to sit up he came near in the glimmering light. She saw his dark form where he tarried a few paces away.
"You're all safe, ma'am. Can't you go on sleeping?"
A watch of the night often brings to recollection some duty forgotten during the day. "Do you know where Elvira Halsey is?"