I understood at once. Butler, Wraxall, Toby Tice, and the fourth member of the band had arrived in Cresap's camp. But I cared not; I was about to accomplish my mission under their four noses, and live to balance my account with them later.
"Is Mount sleeping?" I asked.
The old man laughed.
"I have never seen him sleep," he said. "I know him well, but I have never seen him asleep. He is out yonder, somewhere, prowling."
"And Shemuel?—and Cade Renard?" I inquired.
"Shemuel is on his way to Pittsburg; Renard mouses with Mount. Is your rifle loaded, sir? There be foul company at the other inn. This night, too, did Greathouse make nine savages drunk with spirits. Have a care that they cross not your path, young man; for, drunk, your Indians go blind like rattlesnakes in September, and like those serpents, too, they strike without warning. Have a care, sir!"
"I wish you knew the Indians as well as I do," said I, smiling. "I fear none of them, save the Lenni-Lenape, and these I fear only because I have never known them. I think the whole world can be tamed with kindness."
Boyd shook his gray head, watching me in silence.
A brisk southwest wind was singing through the pines as I stepped out-of-doors and peered cautiously about. There was nothing stirring save the wind and the unseen leaves in the forest. I primed my rifle and sheltered the pan under the hollow of my arm, then stole forth into the starlit road.
To gain the river, whence the trail ran northward to the Cayuga camp, I was obliged to pass the fort, and consequently the "Greathouse Inn." But I had no fear at this hour o' morning, and I trotted on along the stump fence like a cub-fox in his proper runway, until the first curve in the road brought me to Greathouse's inn.