He saw nothing on the stream, and his eyes came back to the thin, hatchet-faced chief, who stood upon the bank looking so intently.  Red Eagle had begun to interest him greatly.  He impressed Paul as being a thorough savage of savages, fairly breathing cruelty and cunning, and Paul saw now a note of expectation, of cruel expectation, in the fierce black eyes of the Shawnee.  And as he looked, a sudden change came over the face of the chief.  A gleam appeared in the black eyes, and the tall, thin figure seemed to raise itself a little higher.  Paul again looked up the stream, and lo! a tiny dark spot appeared upon its surface.  He watched it as the chief watched it, and it grew, coming steadily down the river.  But he did not yet know what it was.

Now the spirit of action descended quickly upon the whole band.  The chief left the shore and gave quick, low orders to the men, who sank back into the forest, taking Paul and Braxton Wyatt with them.  Two warriors, having Paul between them, crouched in a dense thicket, and one of them tapped the unarmed boy meaningly with his tomahawk.  Paul did not see Braxton Wyatt, but he supposed that he was held similarly by other warriors, somewhere near.  In truth, he did not see any of the savages except the two who were with him.  All the rest had melted away with the extraordinary facility that they had for hiding themselves, but Paul knew that they were about him, pressed close to the earth, blurred with the foliage or sheltered by tree trunks.

The boy’s eyes turned back to the river, and the black blot floating on its surface.  That blot, he knew, had caused this sudden disappearance of a whole band of Shawnees, and he wanted to know more.  The black blot came down the stream and grew into shape and outline, and the shape and outline were those of a boat.  An Indian canoe?  No; it rapidly grew beyond the size of any canoe used by the savages, and began to stand up from the water in broad and stiff fashion.  Then Paul’s heart thumped, because all at once he knew.  It was a flatboat, and it was certainly loaded with emigrants coming down the Ohio, women and children as well as men, and the Shawnees had laid an ambush.  This was what the crafty Red Eagle had been waiting for so long.

It was the final touch of savagery, and the boy’s generous and noble heart rebelled within him.  He started up, propelled by the impulse to warn; but the two warriors pulled him violently back, one of them again touching him significantly with his tomahawk.  Paul knew that it was useless.  Any movement or cry of his would cause his own death, and would not be sufficient to warn those on the boat.  He sank back again, trembling in every nerve, not for himself but for the unsuspecting travelers on the river.

The boat came steadily on, Paul saw a number of men, some walking about and others at the huge sweeps with which it was controlled.  And—­yes, there was a woman and a child, too; a little girl with long, yellow curls, who played on the rude deck.  Paul put his hand to his face, and it came back wet.