ached. He had meant to gain the open space whereby they had approached in the afternoon, and thus, following, as well as memory would allow, their trail, come within distant sight of the palisade and then dip down the lower slope of the mountain and so reach the trail to the south. But to do that now he must pass below the cave and keep to the forest until well beyond the position of the sentinel and not until then emerge into the open. At all hazards, he told himself, he would put much space between himself and the Indian there, even if in so doing he lost all sense of direction. It were better to risk being lost than recapture.
Acting on this resolve, he slipped around the great bole of an oak and, keeping it between him and the spot from whence the sound of the yawn had come, stole obliquely down the slope. He made but slow progress, for in the hush of the woods even the flicking of a branch or the crunch of an acorn might arouse the suspicions of the sentinel. The Indian hearing is very acute and David had heard amazing instances of it. Slowly, stealthily he went, and not until a full two hundred paces had been traversed did he turn at something less than a right angle to
