They heard faint noises in the forest, the passage of the wind, or the stir of a wild animal, and after a while they heard the long, plaintive and weird note, with which they were so familiar, the howl of the wolf.

It was characteristic of the three that when this faint note, almost like the sigh of the wind among the wet trees, reached their ears, they said nothing, but merely stopped and in the obscurity glanced at one another with eyes of understanding.  They listened patiently, and the low, plaintive howl came again and then once more, all from different points of the compass.  There had been a time when Henry Ware was deceived for a moment by these cries, but it was not possible now.

“It must be a gathering of the southern tribes,” he said, “and I imagine that Braxton Wyatt is with them, giving them advice.  Sol, suppose that you go to the right and Tom to the left.  I’ll stay in the center, and if any one of us sees an enemy he’s to shoot at it and rouse the camp.”

The two were gone in an instant, and Henry was left alone.  That instant all the old, primeval instincts, so powerful in him, were aroused.  His sixth sense, the sense of danger, was speaking to him in a voice that he could not but hear.  There, too, was the quaver of the wolf.  All the signals of alarm were set, and he resolved that he should be the first to see danger when It showed its head.

The clouds piled in heavier masses in the sky, and the darkness thickened.  The wind blew lightly and its sound among the boughs and leaves was a long, plaintive sigh that had in it a tone like the cry of a woman.  The rain came only in gusts, but when it struck it was sharp and cold.  The trees stood out, black and ill-defined, like skeletons.  But the forest, its wet, its chill, and its loneliness, had no effect upon the attuned mind of Henry Ware.  He was in his native element, and every nerve in him thrilled with the knowledge that he would rise to meet the crisis, whatever it might be.

He was crouched by the side of a great oak, his form blurring with its trunk, his eyes, now used to the darkness, searching every covert in front—­he knew that Shif’less Sol and Tom Ross would watch to right and left.

The cry of the wolf did not come again, save for a lone note, now much nearer.  But when its sound passed through the forest, Henry Ware’s form seemed to become a little more taut and he leaned a little further forward.  Beyond the slight bending motion he did not stir.

He still saw nothing and heard nothing, but that voice which was his sixth sense was calling to him more loudly than ever, and he was ready to respond.

In front of him, thirty yards away, lay a thicket or undergrowth, and he watched it incessantly.  It seemed to him now that he knew every bush and briar and vine.  Presently a briar moved, and then a bush, and then a vine, but they moved against the wind, and the sharp eyes of the watcher saw it.  He sank a little lower and the muzzle of his rifle stole forward.  He made not the slightest sound, and good eyes, only a few yards away, could not have separated his dark figure from that of the tree trunk.