But the task was not as easy as they had thought.  The peninsula was very low and the greater part of it had been overflowed recently.  Their feet, no matter how lightly they stepped, sank in the mire, and when they pulled them out again the mud emitted a sticky sigh.  An owl perched in a tree, high above the marsh, began to hoot dismally, and Shif’less Sol uttered a growl.

“I wish we had the big, dry woods o’ Kentucky to go through,” he whispered to Henry.  “I ain’t much o’ a mud-crawler.”

“But as we haven’t got those big, dry woods,” Henry whispered back, “we’ll have to crawl, creep, or walk through the mud.”

It was about two miles across the neck, and as they went very slowly for fear of making noise, it took them a full hour to reach the other side, or to come near enough to see what might be there.  Then they found that Henry’s belief, or rather intuition, was right.

They could see quite well from the dense covert.  All the Spanish boats were tied up at the shore and two or three fires had been built for the purposes of cooking.  The soldiers in their picturesque costumes lounged about.  The hum of conversation and now and then a laugh arose.

Henry soon marked Francisco Alvarez.  The Spanish leader sat on a little heap of boughs on the highest and dryest spot in the camp, and all who approached him did so with every sign of respect—­if they spoke it was hat in hand.

The firelight fell in a red blaze across the face of Francisco Alvarez and revealed every feature in minute detail to the keen eyes in the covert.  It was a thin, haughty face, clear-cut and cruel, but just now it’s air was that of satisfaction, as if in the opinion of Francisco Alvarez all things were going well with his plans.  Henry believed that he could guess his thoughts.  “He thinks that the Spanish are already committed against us and that he and Braxton Wyatt with a force of Spaniards and the tribes will yet destroy our settlements in Kentucky.”

Thinking of Braxton Wyatt he looked for him and, as he looked, the renegade came from a point near the shore toward the commander.  It was evident that Wyatt had been faring well.  His frontier dress had been partly replaced with gay Spanish garments.  He now wore a cap with a feather in it, and a velvet doublet.  He, too, had a most complacent look.

Wyatt approached Alvarez and the commander courteously invited him to a seat on the hillock near him.  When he took the seat a soldier brought the renegade a cup of wine, and he drank, first lifting the cup toward Alvarez as if he drank a toast to the success of the alliance.  There could be no doubt about the perfect understanding of the two; and Henry’s anger rose.  It was impossible to set a limit to what a ruthless and determined man like Francisco Alvarez might do.

Wyatt rose presently after a nod to the commander and walked among the soldiers.  He seemed to have no particular object in view and his strollings brought him near to the edge of the swampy forest.