The escape from the cabin was effected without discovery, and the twain moved off in the brilliant starlight.
“I’d like to take the boy with us,” whispered the hermit; “but he could never be rescued from that mad-woman and her wolves. By and by we’ll come back, Oona, and catch the boy out o’ her fingers somewhere. I tell you ’twould be impossible to take him from the animal’s jaws.”
“Alaska’s children have sharp teeth,” responded Oonalooska, in the low tone that characterized the hermit’s words, “and they know how to use them. When the Lone Man and Oonalooska return, Okalona will get the boy to the edge of the Shawnees’ town.”
Across spots where no shadows fell, the twain were forced to crawl on all-fours, and at length found themselves near the confines of the village.
“Let’s rise now,” whispered Hewitt; “that long crawl has cramped me, and my legs feel as heavy as stones.”
The brave whispered approvingly, and Hewitt sprung to his feet. “Free at last!” he uttered, in an audible tone, for they were fully thirty feet from the nearest lodge, and in the shade.
The next instant the Indian grasped his arm, and pulled him to the earth.
“What’s up, Oona? I—”
The sight that greeted the hermit’s vision promptly terminated the sentence he was framing.
In the starlight just upon the edge of the shade, as though they had suddenly risen from the earth, stood Alaska and a gigantic wolf.