Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/217



LMAYNE on Nunda the Moon-Face rode in the lead. Behind him strode the Muskogee warrior, Little Mink, who, soon after the flight began, had stepped suddenly from behind a tree trunk and joined the party. Jolie Stanwicke on Selu rode next, and Lachlan on Tuti the Snowbird brought up the rear. They followed no trail. For some miles, after leaving the pack train, they had raced along the Great Path, then they had turned to the right into the forest.

Of necessity their pace was now much slower. Sometimes the horses trotted, but more often their gait was a walk. They were heading, Lachlan had told Jolie, for the great swamp of the Santee, a vast fastness of cypress forest and interminable canebrakes where, Almayne felt confident, they could throw their pursuers off the track.

Riding in single file, they spoke seldom, but Jolie, her bridle rein loose on Selu's neck, hummed a song. She had no sense of peril, no consciousness of anxiety. In the charge of these three men she felt as safe in this trackless wilderness as she had ever felt amid the groves of Hampshire.

She studied them as she rode. In front of her the eagle feather, fastened in Little Mink's narrow crest