Daubert knew from experience that further questions were useless. He walked, grimly silent, by the captain's side, as they made their way to the log buildings. The lumberman's instructions were immediately followed.
At length Captain Slater, mounted on a speckled horse and resting an old-fashioned gun across the saddle, uttered a gruff command and flapped his reins.
There was no backward glance from the cold gray eyes as he rode away, a stern, commanding figure, erect as a general on the field. His form scarcely seemed to sway, though the animal crashed through tall grass and bushes, on a steady gallop toward the road.
The captain's grizzled, weather-beaten face wore a look which plainly showed that, like a knight errant of old, he was ready and eager for battle; no danger—nothing—could daunt him.
A moment more, and the intervening trees shut from view the speckled horse and his determined rider.
CHAPTER VII
THE INDIAN
Wanatoma, aged warrior and friend of the boys, sat before his log cabin in the midst of the forest wilderness. He had retreated to this lonely spot when increasing years robbed him of his power as chieftain. Wanatoma could not bear to see himself supplanted by a younger man. The braves no longer circled before him in wild, fantastic dances; his voice in the council of the tribe carried with it but little weight; so, proudly, he had withdrawn to the solitude, where nature, kinder than man, makes no distinction between youth and age.
The Indian's black hair was streaked with gray; his once powerful shoulders were slightly bent; his eyes were dimmed, but the fiery spirit of the warrior still smouldered within him; he quailed before neither man nor beast.