“All right, Braxton,” he said, “I’ll do as you suggest.  We won’t make them any trouble now, but after a while we’ll escape.”

“That’s the best way,” said Wyatt.

Red Eagle and another warrior, who seemed to be his lieutenant, were talking earnestly.  The chief presently beckoned to Wyatt, who went over to him and replied to several questions.  But Wyatt came back in a few moments, and took his seat again beside Paul.

A half hour later they resumed the march, and Paul knew by the sun that they were going northward.  Hence he inferred that they would make no further attack upon the white hunters, and were bound for what they called home.  Refreshed by his rest and sleep, and relieved by the removal of the bandages from his wrists, he walked beside Wyatt with a springy step, and his outlook upon life was fairly cheerful.  It was wonderful what the comradeship of one of his own kind did for him!  After all, he had probably been deceived about Braxton Wyatt.  Merely because his ways were not the ways of Henry and Paul was not proof that he was not the right kind of fellow.  Now he was sympathetic and helpful enough, when sympathy and help were needed.

The march northward was leisurely.  The Shawnees seemed to have no further expectation of meeting a foe, and they were not so vigilant.  Paul and Braxton Wyatt were kept in the center of the group, but they were permitted to talk as much as they pleased, and Paul was not annoyed by any blow or kick.

“Have you any idea how far it is to their village, Braxton?” Paul asked.

“A long distance,” replied Wyatt.  “We shall not be there under two weeks, and as the party may turn aside for hunting or something else, it may be much longer.”

“It will give Henry and Ross and the others more time to rescue us,” said Paul.

Braxton Wyatt shrugged his shoulders.

“I wouldn’t put much hope in that if I were you, Paul,” he said.  “This band is very strong.  Since the two parties joined it numbers forty warriors, and our friends could do nothing.  We must pretend to like them, to fall in with their ways, and to behave as if we liked the wild life as well as that back in the settlements, and in time would like it better.”

“I could never do that,” said Paul.  “All kinds of savages repel me.”

Braxton Wyatt shrugged his shoulders again.

“One must do the best he can,” he said briefly.

The leisurely march proceeded, and they camped the next afternoon in the midst of a magnificent forest of beech, oak, and hickory, building a great fire, and lounging about it in apparently careless fashion.  But Paul was enough of a woodsman to know that some of the warriors were on watch, and he and Braxton, as usual, were compelled to sit in the center of the group, where there was no shadow of a chance to escape.

Hunters whom they had sent out presently brought in the bodies of two deer, and then they had a great feast.  The venison was half cooked in strips and chunks over the coals, and the warriors ate it voraciously, chattering to each other, meanwhile, as Paul did not know that Indians ever talked.