“We must flee, Cato,” said he.  “Fortunately it will soon be dark, when they cannot follow us.”

“Will we bofe git on de hoss?” asked the frightened negro.

“No; it will do no good.  Let us take to the woods.  Hush!  What’s that?”

Just as they were about moving, the sharp report of a rifle came upon their ears, and with a loud whoop the Shawnees rushed off in a body, taking an easterly direction, which was different from that followed by the soldier and negro.  Now that all immediate danger was gone, the two remained behind, to learn, if possible, the cause of the mysterious shot and subsequent action of the Shawnees.

It was not until night, when Oonomoo, the Huron, returned, that the cause was made known.  He had approached several hours before, and seen the savages in consultation, and divined the cause of it.  To divert them from pursuing his two friends, whom they would most certainly have captured, he discharged his piece among them, and then purposely showed himself to draw them after him.  The stratagem succeeded as well as he could have wished.  He easily eluded them, until they had followed him some distance in the woods, when he made his way back again to the clearing, where he rejoined the Lieutenant and the negro.

CHAPTER V.

THE HOME OF THE HURON.

  Tis nature’s worship—­felt—­confessed,
  Far as the life which warms the breast! 
  The sturdy savage midst his clan,
  The rudest portraiture of man,
  In trackless woods and boundless plains,
  Where everlasting wildness reigns,
  Owns the still throb—­the secret start—­
  The hidden impulse of the heart.—­BYRON.

The Huron, after his escape from the Shawnees, quickened his pace, as we have stated, and went many a mile before he changed his long, sidling trot into the less rapid walk.  When he did this, it was upon the shore of a large creek, which ran through one of the wildest and most desolate regions of Ohio.  In some portions the banks were nothing more than a continuous swamp, the creek spreading out like a lake among the reeds and undergrowth, through which glided the enormous water-snake, frightened at the apparition of a man in this lonely spot.  The bright fish darted hither and thither, their sides flashing up in the sunlight like burnished silver.

The agile Indian sprung lightly from one turf of earth to another, now balancing himself on a rotten stump or root, now walking the length of some fallen tree, so decayed and water-eaten that it mashed to a pulp beneath his feet, and then leaping to some other precarious foothold, progressing rapidly all the time and with such skill that he hardly wetted his moccasin.