"Did you hear something?" whispered Amos.
Du Lhut put his finger to his lips, and then in an instant was down again upon his face with his ear fixed to the ground. He sprang up with the look of a man who has heard what he expected to hear.
"Walk on," said he quietly, "and behave exactly as you have done all day."
"What is it, then?"
"Indians."
"In front of us?"
"No, behind us."
"What are they doing?"
"They are following us."
"How many of them?"
"Two, I think."
The friends glanced back involuntarily over their shoulders into the dense blackness of the forest. At one point a single broad shaft of light slid down between two pines and cast a golden blotch upon their track. Save for this one vivid spot all was sombre and silent.
"Do not look round," whispered Du Lhut sharply. "Walk on as before."
"Are they enemies?"
"They are Iroquois."
"And pursuing us?"
"No, we are now pursuing them."
"Shall we turn, then?"
"No, they would vanish like shadows,"
"How far off are they?"
"About two hundred paces, I think."
"They cannot see us, then?"
"I think not, but I cannot be sure. They are following our trail, I think."
"What shall we do, then?"
"Let us make a circle and get behind them."
Turning sharp to the left he led them in a long curve through the woods, hurrying swiftly and yet silently under the darkest shadows of the trees. Then he turned again, and presently halted.
"This is our own track," said he.
"Ay, and two Redskins have pa.s.sed over it," cried Amos, bending down, and pointing to marks which were entirely invisible to Ephraim Savage or De Catinat.
"A full-grown warrior and a lad on his first warpath," said Du Lhut. "They were moving fast, you see, for you can hardly see the heel marks of their moccasins. They walked one behind the other. Now let us follow them as they followed us, and see if we have better luck."
He sped swiftly along the trail with his musket c.o.c.ked in his hand, the others following hard upon his heels, but there was no sound, and no sign of life from the shadowy woods in front of them. Suddenly Du Lhut stopped and grounded his weapon.
"They are still behind us," he said.
"Still behind us?"
"Yes. This is the point where we branched off. They have hesitated a moment, as you can see by their footmarks, and then they have followed on."
"If we go round again and quicken our pace we may overtake them."
"No, they are on their guard now. They must know that it could only be on their account that we went back on our tracks. Lie here behind the fallen log and we shall see if we can catch a glimpse of them."
A great rotten trunk, all green with mould and blotched with pink and purple fungi, lay to one side of where they stood. Behind this the Frenchman crouched, and his three companions followed his example, peering through the brushwood screen in front of them. Still the one broad sheet of sunshine poured down between the two pines, but all else was as dim and as silent as a vast cathedral with pillars of wood and roof of leaf. Not a branch that creaked, nor a twig that snapped, nor any sound at all save the sharp barking of a fox somewhere in the heart of the forest. A thrill of excitement ran through the nerves of De Catinat. It was like one of those games of hide-and-seek which the court used to play, when Louis was in a sportive mood, among the oaks and yew hedges of Versailles. But the forfeit there was a carved fan, or a box of bonbons, and here it was death.
Ten minutes pa.s.sed and there was no sign of any living thing behind them.
"They are over in yonder thicket," whispered Du Lhut, nodding his head towards a dense clump of brushwood, two hundred paces away.
"Have you seen them?"
"No."
"How do you know, then?"
"I saw a squirrel come from his hole in the great white beech-tree yonder. He scuttled back again as if something had scared him. From his hole he can see down into that brushwood."
"Do you think that they know that we are here?"
"They cannot see us. But they are suspicious. They fear a trap."
"Shall we rush for the brushwood?"
"They would pick two of us off, and be gone like shadows through the woods. No, we had best go on our way."
"But they will follow us."
"I hardly think that they will. We are four and they are only two, and they know now that we are on our guard and that we can pick up a trail as quickly as they can themselves. Get behind these trunks where they cannot see us. So! Now stoop until you are past the belt of alder bushes. We must push on fast now, for where there are two Iroquois there are likely to be two hundred not very far off."
"Thank G.o.d that I did not bring Adele!" cried De Catinat.
"Yes, monsieur, it is well for a man to make a comrade of his wife, but not on the borders of the Iroquois country, nor of any other Indian country either."