There was a long and tense silence, full of strangeness to Paul.  He could never get used to these extraordinary situations.  When preparing for combat, as well as in it, the world seemed unreal to him.  He did not see why men should fly at each other’s throats; but the fact was before him, and he could not escape it.

The little hill was so situated that they could see to a considerable distance at all points of the compass, but they yet saw nothing.  Shif’less Sol stretched himself in a new position and grumbled.

“The wust thing about this bed o’ mine here,” he said to Paul, “is that sooner or later I’ll be disturbed in it.  A fellow never kin make people let him alone.  It’s the way here, an’ it’s the way back in the East, too, I reckon.  Now, I’m only occupyin’ a place six feet by two, with the land rollin’ away thousands o’ miles on every side; but it’s this very spot, six feet by two, that the Shawnees are a-lookin’ fur.”

Paul laughed at the shiftless one’s complaint, and the laugh greatly relieved his tension.  Fortunately his tree was very close to Sol’s, and they could carry on a whispered conversation.

“Do you think the Shawnees will really come?” asked Paul, who was always incredulous when the forest was so silent.

“Come!  Of course they will!” replied Shif’less Sol.  “If for no other reason, they’ll do it jest to make me trouble.  I ought to be back thar in the East, teachin’ school or makin’ laws fur somebody.”

Paul’s eyes wandered from Sol to his comrade, and he saw Henry suddenly move, ever so little, then fix his gaze on a point in the forest, three or four hundred yards away.  Paul looked, too, and saw nothing, but he knew well enough that Henry’s keener gaze had detected an alien presence in the bushes.

Henry whispered something to Ross, who followed his glance and then nodded in assent.  The others, too, soon looked at the same point, Jim Hart craning his long neck until it arched like a bow.  Presently from a dense clump of bushes came a little puff of white smoke, and then the stillness was broken by the report of a rifle.  A bullet buried itself in one of the trees on the hill, and Shif’less Sol turned over with a sniff of contempt.

“If they don’t shoot better’n that,” he said, “I might ez well go to sleep.”

But the forest duel had begun, and it was a contest of skill against skill, of craft against craft.  Every device of wilderness warfare known to the red men was practiced, too, by the white men who confronted them.

Paul at first felt an intense excitement, but it was soothed by the calm words of Shif’less Sol.

“I’d be easy about it, Paul,” said the shiftless one.  “That wuz jest a feeler.  They’ve found out that we’re ready for ’em.  There ain’t no chance of a surprise, an’ they shot that bullet merely as a sort o’ way o’ tellin’ us that they had come.  Things won’t be movin’ fur some time yet.”