Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/97

 yet, the night being very black, he judged it unsafe to move, fearing to run upon an invisible enemy. He spent the long hours standing, tense and rigid, his senses strained to the utmost, expecting each moment to feel the fangs or claws of some unknown foe.

How long the chestnut stallion remained in the wild swamp region of the Low Country cannot be told. Probably not long, for while food was abundant, the perils were too many. Nor can it be related how he avoided those perils and found his way at last to the edge of the wide salt marshes between the Low Country mainland and the barrier islands along the sea. Day after day Corane the Raven and Manito-Kinibic the Rattlesnake followed him in his wanderings; and day after day the Raven, patient with the long patience of his race, held fast to the resolution which he had formed at the beginning—the resolution not to attempt the capture of the wild stallion until the time should be fully ripe.

He had to wait long for that time, but in one respect fortune favored the young warrior. Except for the Muskogee ambush in the mountain pass, he suffered no interference at the hands of man and indeed saw scarcely a human face between the Overhills and the coast. Even when he had reached the white men's country—where, however, the set-