Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/155

Rh ached. He had meant to gain the open space whereby they had approached in the afternoon, and thus, following, as well as memory  would allow, their trail, come within distant  sight of the palisade and then dip down the  lower slope of the mountain and so reach the  trail to the south. But to do that now he must pass below the cave and keep to the  forest until well beyond the position of the  sentinel and not until then emerge into the  open. At all hazards, he told himself, he would put much space between himself and  the Indian there, even if in so doing he lost  all sense of direction. It were better to risk being lost than recapture.

Acting on this resolve, he slipped around the great bole of an oak and, keeping it between him and the spot from whence the  sound of the yawn had come, stole obliquely  down the slope. He made but slow progress, for in the hush of the woods even the flicking of a branch or the crunch of an acorn  might arouse the suspicions of the sentinel. The Indian hearing is very acute and David had heard amazing instances of it. Slowly, stealthily he went, and not until a full two  hundred paces had been traversed did he  turn at something less than a right angle to