Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/223

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METIPOM TAKES WAR-PATH
209

smeared braves guarded him closely. He was permitted to retain his bow and arrows, but he had neither knife, spear, nor tomahawk. The pace set by the leaders was brisk and by mid-morning they had crossed two small streams and left some ten or a dozen miles behind them. Straight into the west they had gone, for the most part through park-like forest from which the underbrush had been fired the autumn before, following well-defined trails. Camp was made on the slope of a hill and there they rested until afternoon. Some of the scouts joined them here and made reports to the sachem. John brought food to David and afterwards fetched him water from a brook that ran at the foot of the slope.

David’s skin, unaccustomed as it was to exposure, had suffered from the heat of the sun, and he was glad to seek the shade and burrow into the cool fronds of a patch of ferns. The shadows were lengthening when the journey began again. Now the way led more to the south, and close to sunset a broad valley lay before them through which a shallow river flowed. Keeping to the hills, Metipom led his warriors southward until dusk, by which time they had reached a