But Paul merely laughed low again.

Henry turned from the north to the west, and led now at a pace that was little more than a walk.  Paul and Sol drew deep breaths, as they felt the heavenly air flowing back into their lungs and the spring returning to their muscles.  They went in Indian file, five dusky figures in the shadow, a faint moonlight touching them but wanly, and all silent.  Thus they marched until past midnight, and they heard nothing behind them.  Then their leader stopped, and the others, without a word, stopped with him.

“I think we’ve shaken ’em off,” said Henry, “and we’d better rest and sleep.  Then we can make up our plans.”

“Good enough,” said Shif’less Sol.  “An’ ef any man wakes me up afore next week, I’ll hev his scalp.”

He sank down at once in his buckskins on a particularly soft piece of turf, and in an incredibly brief space of time he was sound asleep.  Jim Hart, doubling up his long, thin figure like a jackknife, imitated him, and Paul was not long in following them to slumberland.  Only Henry and Ross remained awake and watchful, and by and by the moonlight came out and silvered their keen and anxious faces.

CHAPTER X

THE ISLAND IN THE LAKE

When Paul awoke the others were munching the usual breakfast of dried venison, and Henry handed him a piece, which he ate voraciously.  Henry was sitting on the ground, with his back against a fallen log, and he regarded Paul contemplatively.

“Paul,” he said, in the dryest possible tones, “I don’t see how you could have been so hard-hearted.”

Paul looked at him, startled.  “Why, what do you mean?”

“To tear yourself away, as you did, from a loving father and mother.  Why, Sol, here, tells me that you actually threw your mother from you.”

“Truth, Gospel truth,” put in Shif’less Sol.  “I never seen sech a cruel, keerless person.  He gives her jest one fling into the south, an’ then he bolts off into the north, like an arrow out o’ the bow.  I follows him lickety-split to bring him back, but he runs so fast I can’t ketch him.”

Paul smiled.

“I’ve one father and mother already,” he said, “and so I have no use for two.  Rather than cause embarrassment, I came away as quickly as I could.”

“You did come fast,” said Henry dryly.

“It was mighty fine of all of you to come after me,” said Paul earnestly, “and to risk your lives to save me from the Shawnees.  But I knew you’d do it.”

“Uv course,” said Tom Ross simply.  “The rest uv our party would hev come, too, but they were needed back thar in Kentucky.  Besides, we could spare ‘em, ez it took cunnin’ an’ not numbers to do what we had to do.”

“What’s our next step?” asked Paul, who was in the highest of spirits—­his imagination, with its usual vivid rebound, now painted everything in glowing colors.