Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/234

 some minutes she studied her reflection in the water, finding it, however, but an indifferent looking-glass. She turned away with a smile at her foolish whim, and saw Lachlan and Almayne walking towards her from the woods beyond the lean-to.

She went to meet them. Almayne carried a wild turkey dangling from his left hand, and she noticed with surprise that Lachlan carried not only his rifle but a bow also. She clapped her hands over the gobbler, though declaring it a shame to kill so handsome a bird, and appropriated one of its long tail feathers for her hat; then she exclaimed over Lachlan's bow—a rude weapon made out of a hickory sapling, with a length of thin buckskin as a string.

The swamp turkeys were so tame, Lachlan told her, that it was easy to approach them. Almayne and he had made this bow, with sharpened canes for arrows, because even here in the heart of the swamp the sound of a rifle might betray them to some enemy.

They breakfasted on cold venison, on certain roots which Almayne had prepared in the Indian fashion, and on corn-cakes made from meal, of which both Lachlan and Almayne carried a supply. In high spirits she pronounced it as good a breakfast as any she had ever had in London, and Almayne, obviously pleased, promised her a greater variety when dinner was served. He was telling her of the wild vegetables of the woods and of the fine bass that they could kill in the lagoon with Lachlan's cane arrows when suddenly, in the midst of a sentence, he stopped.