The lithe, yellow figure that had lain in front of the doorway had waked. As Landless gazed, it rose to its knees, then with a quick, cat-like grace to its feet, stretched itself, cast a listening look around the sleeping circle, and laid its gun softly down, then with a noiseless step and a smile upon its evil face, it, too entered the hut.
Landless waited until the mulatto was well across the threshold, and then sprang upon him, dragging him to the ground, where he held him with his knee against his chest. He writhed and struggled, but the white man was the stronger, and held him down: he tried to cry out, but the other's hands were at his throat choking the life from him. Putting all his strength into one hand, Landless felt with the other for his knife. The movement brought his face forward into the shaft of moonlight that trembled through the opening. "You!" said the eyes of the mulatto, and his clutching hands tore at the hand about his throat. The hand pressed closer, and with the other Landless struck the knife into the yellow bosom. When the writhing form was quite still, he rose from his knees, and looked down upon the evil face flung back to meet the moonlight. The struggle had lasted but a minute, and had been without sound—not a sleeping savage had stirred. But he now heard frightened breathing within the hut. By this his eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and he made out something white niched into the corner opposite. As he advanced towards it, it started away, and would have brushed past him, but he seized it. "Madam!" he whispered. "Do not scream. It is I, Godfrey Landless."
In the darkness he felt the rigor of terror leave the form which he held. It swayed against him, and the head fell back across his arm. He raised the fainting figure, and stepping across the body of the mulatto issued from the shed, to find Monakatocka standing beside the entrance, knife in hand, and watchfully regardful of the sleeping Ricahecrians.
CHAPTER XXX
THE BACKWARD TRACK
Landless turned to the pathway by which they had come, but the Indian shook his head, and pointing to the stream which, making a sudden turn, brawled along at their very feet, stepped noiselessly down into the water, first, however, possessing himself of Luiz Sebastian's gun, which lay upon the ground beside the hut. Landless, following him in silence, would have turned his face towards the river, but again the Susquehannock shook his head and began to make his way slowly and warily up stream.
The other knew how to obey. Holding with one arm the unconscious form of the woman he had come so many leagues to seek, and with the other steadying himself by boulder and projecting cliff, he followed his companion past the sleeping Ricahecrians, out of the shadow of the great arch, into the splendor of the moonlight beyond. It was not until they had gone a long distance, past vast, scarred cliffs, through close, dark, scented tunnels formed by the overarching boughs of great arbor-vitæs, up smooth slides where the water came down upon them in long, unbroken, glassy green slopes, that Landless said, in a low voice: "Why do we go up this stream instead of back to the river? It is their road we are traveling."
The faint, reluctant smile of the Indian crossed the Susquehannock's face. "The white man is very wise except when he is in the woods. Then he is as if every brook ran fire-water and he had drunk of them all. A pappoose could trick him. When these Algonquin dogs wake and find the fawn fled and the yellow slave killed, they will cast about for our trail, and they will find that we came up from the river. Then, when they find no backward track, but only that we entered the water there, before the maiden's hut, they will think that we have gone down the stream, back to the river. They will go down to the river themselves, but when they have reached it they will not know what to do. They will think, 'They who come after the Ricahecrians into the Blue Mountains must be many, with great hearts and with guns.' They will think, 'They came in boats, and one of their braves and one Iroquois, stealing up this stream, came upon the Ricahecrians when Kiwassa had closed their eyes and their ears, and stole away the fawn that the Ricahecrians had taken, and killed the man who fled with them from the palefaces.' And it will take a long time for them to find that there were no boats and that but two real men have followed them into the Blue Mountains, for I covered our trail where this stream runs into the river very carefully. After a while they will find it, and after another while they will find that the chief of the Conestogas and his white brother and the maiden have gone up the stream, and they will come after us. But that will not be until after the full sun power, and by then we must be far from here."
"It is good," said Landless briefly. "Monakatocka has the wisdom of the woods."
"Monakatocka is a great chief," was the sententious reply.