Clark’s eyes shot fire, and he brought down the stock of his rifle with a thud.

“By the eternal God!” he cried, “I believe you are a traitor.  I’ve been watching you every step, and you’ve acted strangely this morning.”

“Ay, ay,” came from the men round him.

“Silence!” cried Clark, and turned again to the cowering Saunders.  “You pretend to know the way to Kaskaskia, you bring us to the middle of the Indian country where we may be wiped out at any time, and now you have the damned effrontery to tell me that you have lost your way.  I am a man of my word,” he added with a vibrant intensity, and pointed to the limbs of a giant tree which stood at the edge of the distant forest.  “I will give you half an hour, but as I live, I will leave you hanging there.”

The man’s brown hand trembled as he clutched his rifle barrel.

“’Tis a hard country, sir,” he said.  “I’m lost.  I swear it on the evangels.”

“A hard country!” cried Clark.  “A man would have to walk over it but once to know it.  I believe you are a damned traitor and perjurer,—­in spite of your oath, a British spy.”

Saunders wiped the sweat from his brow on his buckskin sleeve.

“I reckon I could get the trace, Colonel, if you’d let me go a little way into the prairie.”

“Half an hour,” said Clark, “and you’ll not go alone.”  Sweeping his eye over Bowman’s company, he picked out a man here and a man there to go with Saunders.  Then his eye lighted on me.  “Where’s McChesney?” he said.  “Fetch McChesney.”

I ran to get Tom, and seven of them went away, with Saunders in the middle, Clark watching them like a hawk, while the men sat down in the grass to wait.  Fifteen minutes went by, and twenty, and twenty-five, and Clark was calling for a rope, when some one caught sight of the squad in the distance returning at a run.  And when they came within hail it was Saunders’ voice we heard, shouting brokenly:—­

“I’ve struck it, Colonel, I’ve struck the trace.  There’s a pecan at the edge of the bottom with my own blaze on it.”

“May you never be as near death again,” said the Colonel, grimly, as he gave the order to march.

The fourth day passed, and we left behind us the patches of forest and came into the open prairie,—­as far as the eye could reach a long, level sea of waving green.  The scanty provisions ran out, hunger was added to the pangs of thirst and weariness, and here and there in the straggling file discontent smouldered and angry undertone was heard.  Kaskaskia was somewhere to the west and north; but how far?  Clark had misled them.  And in addition it were foolish to believe that the garrison had not been warned.  English soldiers and French militia and Indian allies stood ready for our reception.  Of such was the talk as we lay down in the grass under the stars on the fifth night.  For in the rank and file an empty stomach is not hopeful.