“It’s getting too cold now,” said Henry, “to sleep in our clothes only on the ground in the forest.”

They made up the blankets in tight little rolls, which they fastened on their backs, and Paul and Jim Hart put in a tanned deerskin with each of theirs.

“They’re pow’ful light, an’ they may come in mighty handy,” said Long Jim.

The night fortunately was dark, as they had hoped, and about eleven o’clock they embarked in the canoe, paddling straight for the western shore.  Paul looked back with some regret at the island, which at times had been a snug little home.  The ancient, mummified bodies in the trees had protected them, as if with a circle of steel, and he was grateful to those dead of long ago.

They saw no sign of the Indian canoes, and both Henry and Ross were certain that they were in camp somewhere on the eastern shore.  The little party reached the dense woods on the west without incident whatever, and there they partly sank the canoe in shallow water among dense bushes.  Then they plunged into the forest, and traveled fast.  Shif’less Sol spoke after a while, and apparently his groaning voice was drawn up from the very bottom of his chest.

“Oh, that blessed canoe!” he said.  “I wuz so happy when I wuz a-ridin’ in it, an’ somebody else wuz a-paddlin’.  Now I hev to do all my own work.”

“You wouldn’t be truly happy, Sol Hyde,” said Jim Hart, “’less you wuz ridin’ in a gilt coach drawed by four white horses, right smack through the woods here.”

“That’s heaven,” said the shiftless one, with a deep sigh.  “I don’t ever dream o’ sech a thing ez that, and please don’t call it up to my mind, Jim Hart; the contras’ between that an’ footin’ it ez I am now is too cruel an’ too great.”

Paul smiled.  The little by-play between those two good friends amused and brightened him, but nothing else was said for a long time.  Then it was Henry who spoke, and he called a halt.

“The big Miami village is not more than a dozen miles away,” he said, “and the warriors there are expecting messengers from the Shawnees, with war belts.  The messengers will pass near here, and we’ll wait for them.  The rest of you will go to sleep, and Tom and I will watch.”

Paul, Jim Hart, and Shif’less Sol rolled themselves in their blankets and lay down under a tree, the shiftless one murmuring, “Now, this is what I like,” and the others saying nothing.  Paul was devoutly grateful for the blanket, because the air was now quite cold, but in five minutes all emotions were lost in deep and dreamless sleep.

When Paul awoke from his slumber he started up in horror.  Three powerful, painted Shawnees stood over him.  He was so much overwhelmed by the catastrophe that he could only utter a kind of gasp.  But the blood flowed back from his heart into his veins when he heard the dry laugh of Long Jim Hart.

“Paul,” said Jim, “I’d like to introduce you to the three new Shawnee warriors that you used to know, when they were white, an’ that you called then Henry Ware, Tom Ross, and Sol Hyde.”