Chapter X. The Island in the Lake

When Paul awoke the others were munching the usual breakfast of dried venison, and Henry handed him a piece, which he ate voraciously. Henry was sitting on the ground, with his back against a fallen log, and he regarded Paul contemplatively.

"Paul," he said, in the dryest possible tones, "I don't see how you could have been so hard-hearted."

Paul looked at him, startled. "Why, what do you mean?"

"To tear yourself away, as you did, from a loving father and mother. Why, Sol, here, tells me that you actually threw your mother from you."

"Truth, Gospel truth," put in Shif'less Sol. "I never seen sech a cruel, keerless person. He gives her jest one fling into the south, an' then he bolts off into the north, like an arrow out o' the bow. I follows him lickety-split to bring him back, but he runs so fast I can't ketch him."

Paul smiled.

"I've one father and mother already," he said, "and so I have no use for two. Rather than cause embarrassment, I came away as quickly as I could."

"You did come fast," said Henry dryly.

"It was mighty fine of all of you to come after me," said Paul earnestly, "and to risk your lives to save me from the Shawnees. But I knew you'd do it."

"Uv course," said Tom Ross simply. "The rest uv our party would hev come, too, but they were needed back thar in Kentucky. Besides, we could spare 'em, ez it took cunnin' an' not numbers to do what we had to do."

"What's our next step?" asked Paul, who was in the highest of spirits--his imagination, with its usual vivid rebound, now painted everything in glowing colors.

"We are going northward," said Henry.

"Northward?"

"Yes, it's necessary. There's some great movement on foot among the tribes. It's not the Shawnees alone, but the Miamis and Wyandots and others as well, though the Shawnees are leaders. War belts are passing between all the tribes, and we think they are joining together to destroy all the white settlements in Kentucky."

"An' some renegades are helpin' 'em," said Tom Ross. "They may hev better luck than they did when they attacked Wareville."

"Yes, an' there's Braxton Wyatt," said Shif'less Sol sorrowfully, "He's cunnin' an' revengeful, an' he'll do us a power o' harm. Paul, you ought to a-let me put a knife in atween his ribs when I had the chance. I might a-saved some good lives an' a power o' sufferin'."

Paul did not reply, but he was not sorry that he had interfered. He could not see a bound youth killed.

"I think we'd better be goin' now," said Tom Ross. "We've got to keep to the north, to throw the Shawnees off the track, an' then we'll come back an' spy on