Joe took heed to the warning and spoke no more.  He gave all his attention to the course over which he was being taken.  Here was his first opportunity to learn something of Indians and their woodcraft.  It occurred to him that his captors would not have been so gay and careless had they not believed themselves safe from pursuit, and he concluded they were leisurely conducting him to one of the Indian towns.  He watched the supple figure before him, wondering at the quick step, light as the fall of a leaf, and tried to walk as softly.  He found, however, that where the Indian readily avoided the sticks and brush, he was unable to move without snapping twigs.  Now and then he would look up and study the lay of the land ahead; and as he came nearer to certain rocks and trees he scrutinized them closely, in order to remember their shape and general appearance.  He believed he was blazing out in his mind this woodland trail, so that should fortune favor him and he contrive to escape, he would be able to find his way back to the river.  Also, he was enjoying the wild scenery.

This forest would have appeared beautiful, even to one indifferent to such charms, and Joe was far from that.  Every moment he felt steal stronger over him a subtle influence which he could not define.  Half unconsciously he tried to analyze it, but it baffled him.  He could no more explain what fascinated him than he could understand what caused the melancholy quiet which hung over the glades and hollows.  He had pictured a real forest so differently from this.  Here was a long lane paved with springy moss and fenced by bright-green sassafras; there a secluded dale, dotted with pale-blue blossoms, over which the giant cottonwoods leaned their heads, jealously guarding the delicate flowers from the sun.  Beech trees, growing close in clanny groups, spread their straight limbs gracefully; the white birches gleamed like silver wherever a stray sunbeam stole through the foliage, and the oaks, monarchs of the forest, rose over all, dark, rugged, and kingly.

Joe soon understood why the party traveled through such open forest.  The chief, seeming hardly to deviate from his direct course, kept clear of broken ground, matted thickets and tangled windfalls.  Joe got a glimpse of dark ravines and heard the music of tumbling waters; he saw gray cliffs grown over with vines, and full of holes and crevices; steep ridges, covered with dense patches of briar and hazel, rising in the way.  Yet the Shawnee always found an easy path.

The sun went down behind the foliage in the west, and shadows appeared low in the glens; then the trees faded into an indistinct mass; a purple shade settled down over the forest, and night brought the party to a halt.

The Indians selected a sheltered spot under the lee of a knoll, at the base of which ran a little brook.  Here in this inclosed space were the remains of a camp-fire.  Evidently the Indians had halted there that same day, for the logs still smouldered.  While one brave fanned the embers, another took from a neighboring branch a haunch of deer meat.  A blaze was soon coaxed from the dull coals, more fuel was added, and presently a cheerful fire shone on the circle of dusky forms.