Her own hand touched his as she spoke, and he put it to his lips in silence. Kneeling upon the turf by the stream, he raised the water in his hands and she stooped and drank from them, and then they went back to the fire and sat beside it without speaking until the arrival of Monakatocka, laden with a wild turkey. An hour later the Susquehannock carefully extinguished the fire, raked all the embers and ashes into the stream, hid beneath great rocks the debris of their morning meal, obliterated all moccasin prints, and having made the little hollow between the hills to all appearance precisely as it was a few hours before, when the foot of man had probably never entered it, stepped into the stream and announced that they were ready to pursue their journey. Before midday, the stream winding to the south, they left it, and plunging into the dark heart of the forest pushed rapidly on with their faces to the east.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE HUT IN THE CLEARING
Five days later saw the wayfarers some thirty leagues to the eastward of the hollow in the hills. They had traveled swiftly, sleeping but a few hours of each night and in the daytime pausing for rest only when Landless, quietly watchful, saw the weariness growing in the eyes of the woman beside him, or noted her lagging footsteps. They had left the higher mountains behind them, but still moved through what seemed an uninhabited territory. No Indian village crowned the hills above the streams; they encountered no roving bands; no solitary hunter met them; nowhere was there sign of human life. If their enemies were upon their track, they knew it not—perfect peace, perfect solitude seemed to encompass them. Still the Indian was vigilant; covering their trail with unimaginable ingenuity, taking advantage of every running stream, every stony hillside, building a fire only in some hidden hollow or fold of the hills, using his bow and arrow to bring down the deer or wild fowl which furnished them food—he stalked behind them, or sat bolt upright against the tree or rock beneath which they had made their resting place, tireless, watchful, the breathing image of caution. If he slept, it was a sleep from which the sound of a falling acorn, the sleepy stir of a partridge in the fern was sufficient to awaken him. Sometimes they rested by fires, for they heard the wolves through the darkness; upon the nights when this was necessary the Susquehannock sat with his gun across his knees, piercing the darkness in every direction with keen and restless eyes. Nothing worse than the wolves—cowardly as yet, for though drawing swiftly nearer, winter and famine were still distant—threatened them; no sound other than the forest sounds disturbed them; through the scant undergrowth or over the moss and partridge berry brushed nothing more appalling than bear or badger. But the Indian watched on.
Day after day Landless and Patricia walked side by side through the reddening forest. His hands steadied her over crags or down ravines, or broke a way for her through vast beds of sassafras or mile-long tangles of wild grape, and when their way lay along the bed of streams he carried her. She had no need to complain of fatigue, for he saw when she was weary, and called a halt. At their rustic meals he waited upon her with grave courtesy, and when they halted for the night he made her couch of fallen leaves and wove for it a screen of branches. They spoke but little and only of the needs of the hour. She bore herself towards him kindly and gently, thanking him with voice and smile for all that he did for her, and there was no mistrust in her eyes; but he saw, or fancied he saw, a shadow in their depths, and thinking, "She does not forget, and neither must I," he set a watch upon himself, and bounds, across which he was not to step.
Upon the afternoon of the sixth day they were passing through a deep and narrow ravine—a mere crack between two precipitous, heavily wooded mountains—when the Indian stopped short in his tracks and uttered a warning "Ugh!" then bent forward in a listening attitude.
"What is it?" asked Landless in a low voice. "I hear nothing."
"It is a sound," said the other in the same tone. "I do not know what yet, for it is far off. But it is in front of us."