Chapter XIV. The Pursuit on the River - Page 2

water from the brook in his cap, and Mary Newton was revived; Jim was reassuring the children, and the other three were in the thickets, watching lest the surviving Senecas return for attack.

"I don't know who you are, but I think the good God himself must have sent you to our rescue," said Mary Newton reverently.

"We don't know," said Paul, "but we are doing the best we can. Do you think you can walk now?"

"Away from the savages? Yes!" she said passionately. She looked down at the dead figures of the Senecas, and she did not feel a single trace of pity for them. Again it is necessary to consider time and place.

"Some of my strength came back while I was lying here," she said, "and much more of it when you drove away the Indians."

"Very well," said Henry, who had returned to the dead camp fire with his comrades, "we must start on the back trail at once. The surviving Senecas, joined by other Iroquois, will certainly pursue, and we need all the start that we can get."

Long Jim picked up one of the two younger children and flung him over his shoulder; Tom Ross did as much for the other, but the older two scorned help. They were full of admiration for the great woodsmen, mighty heroes who had suddenly appeared out of the air, as it were, and who had swept like a tornado over the Seneca band. It did not seem possible now that they, could be retaken.

But Mary Newton, with her strength and courage, had also recovered her forethought.

"Maybe it will not be better to go on the back trail," she said. "One of the Senecas told me to-day that six or seven miles farther on was a river flowing into the Susquehanna, and that they would cross this river on a boat now concealed among bushes on the bank. The crossing was at a sudden drop between high banks. Might not we go on, find the boat, and come back in it down the river and into the Susquehanna?"

"That sounds mighty close to wisdom to me," said Shif'less Sol. "Besides, it's likely to have the advantage o' throwin' the Iroquois off our track. They'll think, o' course, that we've gone straight back, an' we'll pass 'em ez we're going forward."

"It's certainly the best plan," said Henry, "and it's worth our while to try for that hidden boat of the Iroquois. Do you know the general direction?"

"Almost due north."

"Then we'll make a curve to the right, in order to avoid any Iroquois who may be returning to this camp, and push for it."

Henry led the way over hilly, rough ground, and the others followed in a silent file, Long Jim and Tom still carrying the two smallest children, who soon fell asleep on their shoulders. Henry did not believe that the returning Iroquois could follow their trail on such a dark night, and