Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/270

254 moment later, with scarce a sound, the form of an Indian came into sight against the sky,  traveling westward, the body bent forward  and the arms trailing in the tireless trot of  his kind. At intervals of a few paces four others followed. Unsuspecting and looking neither to left nor right, the savages passed  swiftly along the trail and were gone. For some minutes David waited in concealment. Then he went on again.

That was not the only alarm, for an hour or so later, where the stream and path led  through a long swamp of alder and willow  and rustling cattail, a sudden floundering and  splashing but a few yards distant brought  his heart to his mouth and held him for a  long moment motionless on the path. But this alarm presaged no danger, for the sound  was only that of some huge animal, probably  a moose, disturbed and in flight. Occasionally river and trail parted company, as when the former cut its way through a narrow  gorge of slaty rock and the latter mounted  a little hill where, against the starlight,  laurel and sweet-fern grew abundantly. But always they came together again sooner or  later, and never was he for more than a moment or two out of sound of the river’s mur-