第62章

They let a full three hours pass, and the night remained dark, but with a faint moon showing.Then they descended slowly into the valley, approaching by cautious degrees the spot where they knew the Indian camp lay.This work required at least three quarters of an hour, and they reached a point where they could see the embers of the fire and the dark figures lying about it.

The Indians, their suspicions lulled, had put out no sentinels, and all were asleep.But the five knew that, at the first shot, they would be as wide awake as if they had never slept, and as formidable as tigers.Their problem seemed as great as ever.So they lay in the bushes and held a whispered conference.

"It's this," said Henry." We want to save the woman and the children from the tomahawks, and to do so we must get them out of range of the blade before the battle begins.""How?" said Tom Ross.

"I've got to slip up, release the woman, arm her, tell her to run for the woods with the children, and then you four must do the most of the rest.""Do you think you can do it, Henry ?" asked Shif'less Sol.

I can, as I will soon show you.I'm going to steal forward to the woman, but the moment you four hear an alarm open with your rifles and pistols.You can come a little nearer without being heard."All of them moved up close to the Indian camp, and lay hidden in the last fringe of bushes except Henry.He lay almost flat upon the ground, carrying his rifle parallel with his side, and in his right hand.He was undertaking one of the severest and most dangerous tests known to a frontiersman.He meant to crawl into the very midst of a camp of the Iroquois, composed of the most alert woodsmen in the world, men who would spring up at the slightest crackle in the brush.Woodmen who, warned by some sixth sense, would awaken at the mere fact of a strange presence.

The four who remained behind in the bushes could not keep their hearts from beating louder and faster.They knew the tremendous risk undertaken by their comrade, but there was not one of them who would have shirked it, had not all yielded it to the one whom they knew to be the best fitted for the task.

Henry crept forward silently, bringing to his aid all the years of skill that he had acquired in his life in the wilds.His body was like that of a serpent, going forward, coil by coil.He was near enough now to see the embers of the fire not yet quite dead, the dark figures scattered about it, sleeping upon the grass with the long ease of custom, and then the outline of the woman apart from the others with the children about her.Henry now lay entirely flat, and his motions were genuinely those of a serpent.

It was by a sort of contraction and relaxation of the body that he moved himself, and his progress was absolutely soundless.

The object of his advance was the woman.He saw by the faint light of the moon that she was not yet asleep.Her face, worn and weather beaten, was upturned to the skies, and the stony look of despair seemed to have settled there forever.She lay upon some pine boughs, and her hands were tied behind her for the night with deerskin.

Henry contorted himself on, inch by inch, for all the world like a great snake.Now he passed the sleeping Senecas, hideous with war paint, and came closer to the woman.She was not paying attention to anything about her, but was merely looking up at the pale, cold stars, as if everything in the world had ceased for her.

Henry crept a little nearer.He made a slight noise, as of a lizard running through the grass, but the woman took no notice.

He crept closer, and.there he lay flat upon the grass within six feet of her, his figure merely a slightly darker blur against the dark blur of the earth.Then, trusting to the woman's courage and strength of mind, he emitted a hiss very soft and low, like the warning of a serpent, half in fear and half in anger.

The woman moved a little, and looked toward the point from which the sound had come.It might have been the formidable hiss of a coiling rattlesnake that she heard, but she felt no fear.She was too much stunned, too near exhaustion to be alarmed by anything, and she did not look a second time.She merely settled back on the pine boughs, and again looked dully up at the pale, cold stars that cared so little for her or hers.

Henry crept another yard nearer, and then he uttered that low noise, sibilant and warning, which the woman, the product of the border, knew to be made by a human being.She raised herself a little, although it was difficult with her bound hands to sit upright, and saw a dark shadow approaching her.That dark shadow she knew to he the figure of a man.An Indian would not be approaching in such a manner, and she looked again, startled into a sudden acute attention, and into a belief that the incredible, the impossible, was about to happen.A voice came from the figure, and its quality was that of the white voice, not the red.

"Do not move," said that incredible voice out of the unknown."Ihave come for your rescue, and others who have come for the same purpose are near.Turn on one side, and I will cut the bonds that hold your arms."The voice, the white voice, was like the touch of fire to Mary Newton.A sudden fierce desire for life and for the lives of her four children awoke within her just when hope had gone the call to life came.She had never heard before a voice so full of cheer and encouragement.It penetrated her whole being.

Exhaustion and despair fled away.

"Turn a little on your side," said the voice.

She turned obediently, and then felt the sharp edge of cold steel as it swept between her wrists and cut the thongs that held them together.Her arms fell apart, and strength permeated every vein of her being.

"We shall attack in a few moments," said the voice, "but at the first shots the Senecas will try to tomahawk you and your children.Hold out your hands."She held out both hands obediently.The handle of a tomahawk was pressed into one, and the muzzle of a double-barreled pistol into the other.Strength flowed down each hand into her body.

"If the time comes, use them; you are strong, and you know how,"said the voice.Then she saw the dark figure creeping away.