“Will my brother be paid in tea or in tobacco?” inquired Sam Bolton.

Haukemah arose.

“Let these remind you always that my heart is good,” said he.  “I may tell my young men that you go?”

“Yes.  We are grateful for these.”

“Old fellow’s a pretty decent sort,” remarked Dick, after Haukemah had stalked away.

“There couldn’t anything have happened better for us!” cried Sam.  “Here I was wondering how we could get away.  It wouldn’t do to travel with them much longer, and it wouldn’t do to quit them without a good reason.  I’m mighty relieved to get shut of them.  The best way over into the Kabinakagam is by way of a little creek the Injuns call the Mattawishguia, and that ought to be a few hours ahead of us now.”  He might have added that all these annoyances, which he was so carefully discounting, had sprung from Dick’s thoughtlessness; but he was silent, sure of the young man’s value when the field of his usefulness should be reached.

CHAPTER NINE

Dick Herron and Sam Bolton sat on the trunk of a fallen tree.  It was dim morning.  Through the haze that shrouded the river figures moved.  Occasionally a sharp sound eddied the motionless silence—­a paddle dropped, the prow of a canoe splashed as it was lifted to the water, the tame crow uttered a squawk.  Little by little the groups dwindled.  Invisible canoes were setting out, beyond the limits of vision.  Soon there remained but a few scattered, cowled figures, the last women hastily loading their craft that they might not be left behind.  Now these, too, thrust through the gray curtain of fog.  The white men were alone.

With the passing of the multitude once again the North came close.  Spying on the deserted camp an hundred smaller woods creatures fearfully approached, bright-eyed, alert, ready to retreat, but eager to investigate for scraps of food that might have been left.  Squirrels poised in spruce-trees, leaped boldly through space, or hurried across little open stretches of ground.  Meat-hawks, their fluffy plumage smoothed to alertness, swooped here and there.  Momentary and hasty scurryings in the dead leaves attested the presence of other animals, faint chirpings and rustlings the presence of other birds, following these their most courageous foragers.  In a day the Indian camp would have taken on the character of the forest; in a month, an ancient ruin, it would have fitted as accurately with its surroundings as an acorn in the cup.

Now the twisted vapours drained from among the tree-trunks into the river bed, where it lay, not more than five feet deep, accurately marking the course of the stream.  The sun struck across the tops of the trees.  A chickadee, upside down in bright-eyed contemplation, uttered two flute-notes.  Instantly a winter-wren, as though at a signal, went into ecstatic ravings.  The North was up and about her daily business.