Half of the men slept ashore every night.  They would build great fires, cook their suppers, and then sit around awhile talking.  Some one would sing, and others would play strange, old tunes on accordion or guitar.  Paul heard many a snatch of song in Spanish or French or Portuguese, and the wilderness would lend an additional charm to the melody.  Adam Colfax, stern ruler that he was, never forbade these amusements.

“It isn’t well to stop up things too tight,” he would say.  “Children have got to make noise, and men are a good deal the same way.  If you seal ’em up they’ll bust.”

These evening scenes always made a deep impression upon Paul.  There were the cheerful fires, lighted for cooking, and now dying down to great beds of coals, the surrounding darkness seeming to come closer and closer, but within it a wide circle of light in which many men sat or reclined at ease, smoking or talking, or doing both.  All were good-natured, the weather was fair so far, the journey easy, the work not excessively hard, and the hunters brought in fresh game in plenty.

They passed the mouth of the bayou near which the Chateau of Beaulieu stood, and Henry and Shif’less Sol went to see it.  They found a small detachment of Spanish soldiers sent by Bernardo Galvez in possession, but the followers of Alvarez had disappeared.  The place seemed lonely and deserted, as the soldiers of Galvez kept close to the house, as if they were afraid of the wilderness.

Henry and Shif’less Sol sped back through the forest toward the river.

“Now I wonder,” said Shif’less Sol, “what could hev become o’ that Spanish feller.  He wuz jest the kind, so proud he wuz, an’ thinkin’ so much o’ himself, to be burnin’ up with hate over what has happened.”

“He has made himself an outlaw,” said Henry, “and it’s my opinion, Sol, that he’s somewhere in these regions.  And Braxton Wyatt is with him, too.  That fellow will never rest in his plots against us.  We’ll hear from them both again.  They’ll try for some sort of revenge.”

They rejoined the boats at noon, and three or four hours later they saw a canoe ahead of them upon the water.  It contained two occupants who graded their speed to that of the fleet, keeping well out of rifle-shot.

“What do you take them to be?” called out Adam Colfax to Henry.

“Indians, I know, and spies, I think,” replied Henry.

Several of the more powerful boats moved ahead of the fleet and endeavored to overtake the canoe, but they could not.  The two Indians who occupied it evidently had skill and powerful arms, as they maintained the distance between themselves and their pursuers.  Henry and Paul, stirred by the interest of the chase, also seized oars and pulled hard, but the canoe presently turned up a small tributary river, where they did not have time to follow it, and they saw it no more.

It was something that many might have passed as a mere incident of the river, but Henry did not forget it.  His sixth sense, the sense of danger, as it were, had received a definite impression, and he paid heed to the warning.