Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/243



T GRAY dawn they started. Almayne on Nunda the Moon-Face held the lead, with Little Mink striding just behind him. Jolie rode next, then O'Sullivan, then Falcon, with Lachlan and Striking Hawk in the rear. By the same tortuous way which had brought them to the grassy knoll in the heart of the swamp, Almayne led them back to the inner edge of the great canebrake. Into the brake they plunged and for miles rode onward through the canes, following the dim, winding paths, seeing no sign of man but only the wild creatures that made and used those sinuous byways.

Night found them still in the canes; that night and the next night and the next. It was Almayne's plan to follow the canebrake inland as far as possible, because inits shelter they would be safer than in the open parklike forest. This lengthened their journey greatly, for the canebrake game-paths were never straight but wound in and out like serpents, crossing and recrossing one another, dividing, rejoining, and dividing again. The brake extended inland for perhaps two hundred miles, following the winding of the river. In an unbroken evergreen belt, from half a mile to a mile or more in width, it bordered the river swamp from