"Somewhere over in that thicket, I think. At least his voice sounded from there. You discovered nothing in the boat?"
"Only a rag and some fishing tackle. Come; we'll have to plunge in somewhere."
She followed closely as I pushed a passage through the obstructing underbrush, finally locating Sam at the edge of a small opening, where the light was sufficiently strong to enable us to distinguish marks of a little-used trail leading along the bottom of a shallow gully bisecting the sidehill. The way was obstructed by roots and rotten tree trunks, and so densely shaded as to be in places almost imperceptible, but Sam managed to find its windings, while we held close enough behind to keep him safely in sight. Once we came into view of the river, but the larger part of the way lay along a hollow, heavily overshadowed by trees, where we could see only a few feet in any direction.
At the crossing of a small stream we noticed the imprint of several feet in the soft mud of the shore. One plainly enough was small and narrow, beyond all question that of a woman, but the others were all men's, one being clad in moccasins. Beyond this point the path trended downward, winding along the face of the hill and much more easily followed. Sam, still ahead, started to clamber across the trunk of a fallen tree, but came to a sudden halt, staring downward at something concealed from our view on, the other side.
"Good Lord o' mercy!" he exclaimed, excitedly.
"What's dat?"
I was close beside him by this time and saw the thing also—the body of a man lying on the ground. The light was so dim only the bare outlines of the recumbent figure were visible, and, following the first shock of discovery, my earliest thought was to spare the girl.
"Wait where you are, Rene!" I exclaimed, waving her back. "There is a man lying here beyond the log. Come, Sam; we will see what he looks like."
He was slow in following, hanging back as I approached closer to the motionless form, and I could hear the muttering of his lips. Unquestionably the man was dead; of this I was assured before I even knelt beside him. He lay prone on his face in a litter of dead leaves, and almost the first thing I noticed was the death wound back of his ear, where a large caliber bullet had pierced the brain. His exposed hands proved him a negro, and it was with a feeling of unusual repugnance that I touched his body, turning it over sufficiently to see the face. The countenance of a negro in death seldom appears natural, and under that faint light, no revealed feature struck me, at first, as familiar. Then, all at once, I knew him, unable to wholly repress a cry of startled surprise, as I stared down into the upturned face—the dead man, evidently murdered, shot treacherously from behind, was Free Pete. I sprang to my feet, gazing about blindly into the dim woods, my mind for the instant dazed by the importance of this discovery. What could it mean? How could it have happened? By what means had he reached this spot in advance of us, and at whose hand had he fallen? He could have been there only for one purpose, surely—in an attempt to guide Eloise Beaucaire and the quadroon Delia. Then what had become of the women? Where were they now?
I stumbled backward to the support of the log, unable to answer any one of these questions, remembering only in that moment that I must tell Rene the truth. Her eyes already were upon me, exhibiting her fright and perplexity, her knowledge that I had viewed something of horror. She could keep silent no longer.