A mile west of the settlement Wetzel abandoned the forest and picked his way down the steep bluff to the river.  Here he prepared to swim to the western shore.  He took off his buckskin garments, spread them out on the ground, placed his knapsack in the middle, and rolling all into a small bundle tied it round his rifle.  Grasping the rifle just above the hammer he waded into the water up to his waist and then, turning easily on his back he held the rifle straight up, allowing the butt to rest on his breast.  This left his right arm unhampered.  With a powerful back-arm stroke he rapidly swam the river, which was deep and narrow at this point.  In a quarter of an hour he was once more in his dry suit.

He was now two miles below the island, where yesterday the Indians had been concealed, and where this morning Miller had crossed.  Wetzel knew Miller expected to be trailed, and that he would use every art and cunning of woodcraft to elude his pursuers, or to lead them into a death-trap.  Wetzel believed Miller had joined the Indians, who had undoubtedly been waiting for him, or for a signal from him, and that he would use them to ambush the trail.

Therefore Wetzel decided he would try to strike Miller’s tracks far west of the river.  He risked a great deal in attempting this because it was possible he might fail to find any trace of the spy.  But Wetzel wasted not one second.  His course was chosen.  With all possible speed, which meant with him walking only when he could not run, he traveled northwest.  If Miller had taken the direction Wetzel suspected, the trails of the two men would cross about ten miles from the Ohio.  But the hunter had not traversed more than a mile of the forest when the dog put his nose high in the air and growled.  Wetzel slowed down into a walk and moved cautiously onward, peering through the green aisles of the woods.  A few rods farther on Tige uttered another growl and put his nose to the ground.  He found a trail.  On examination Wetzel discovered in the moss two moccasin tracks.  Two Indians had passed that point that morning.  They were going northwest directly toward the camp of Wingenund.  Wetzel stuck close to the trail all that day and an hour before dusk he heard the sharp crack of a rifle.  A moment afterward a doe came crashing through the thicket to Wetzel’s right and bounding across a little brook she disappeared.

A tree with a bushy, leafy top had been uprooted by a storm and had fallen across the stream at this point.  Wetzel crawled among the branches.  The dog followed and lay down beside him.  Before darkness set in Wetzel saw that the clear water of the brook had been roiled; therefore, he concluded that somewhere upstream Indians had waded into the brook.  Probably they had killed a deer and were getting their evening meal.