The woman came out of the thicket with a little lad of four asleep in her arms.

“Where do ye live?” Solomon asked.

“Far south on the shore o’ the Mohawk,” she answered in a voice trembling with emotion.

“What’s yer name?”

“I’m Bill Scott’s wife,” she answered.

“Cat’s blood and gunpowder!” Solomon exclaimed.  “I’m Sol Binkus.”

She knelt before the old scout and kissed his knees and could not speak for the fulness of her heart.  Solomon bent over and took the sleeping lad from her arms and held him against his breast.

“Don’t feel bad.  We’re a-goin’ to take keer o’ you,” said Solomon.  “Ayes, sir, we be!  They ain’t nobody goin’ to harm ye—­nobody at all.”

There was a note of tenderness in the voice of the man as he felt the chin of the little lad with his big thumb and finger.

“Do ye know what they done with Bill?” the woman asked soon in a pleading voice.

The scout swallowed as his brain began to work on the problem in hand.

“Bill broke loose an’ got erway.  He’s gone,” Solomon answered in a sad voice.

“Did they torture him?”

“What they done I couldn’t jes’ tell ye.  But they kin’t do no more to him.  He’s gone.”

She seemed to sense his meaning and lay crouched upon the ground with her sorrow until Solomon lifted her to her feet and said: 

“Look here, little womern, this don’t do no good.  I’m goin’ to spread my blanket under the pines an’ I want ye to lay down with yer boy an’ git some sleep.  We got a long trip to-morrer.

“‘Tain’t so bad as it might be—­ye’re kind o’ lucky a’ter all is said an’ done,” he remarked as he covered the woman and the child.

The wounded warrior and the old men were not to be found.  They had sneaked away into the bush.  Jack and Solomon looked about and the latter called but got no answer.

“They’re skeered cl’ar down to the toe nails,” said Solomon.  “They couldn’t stan’ it here.  A lightnin’ thrower is a few too many.  They’d ruther be nigh a rattlesnake.”

The scouts had no sleep that night.  They sat down by the trail side leaning against a log and lighted their pipes.

“You ’member Bill Scott?” Solomon whispered.

“Yes.  We spent a night in his house.”

“He were a mean cuss.  Sold rum to the Injuns.  I allus tol’ him it were wrong but—­my God A’mighty!—­I never ’spected that the fire in the water were a goin’ to burn him up sometime.  No, sir—­I never dreamed he were a-goin’ to be punished so—­never.”

They lay back against the log with their one blanket spread and spent the night in a kind of half sleep.  Every little sound was “like a kick in the ribs,” as Solomon put it, and drove them “into the look and listen business.”  The woman was often crying out or the cow and horses getting up to feed.

“My son, go to sleep,” said Solomon.  “I tell ye there ain’t no danger now—­not a bit.  I don’t know much but I know Injuns—–­plenty.”