I suppose that I really desired him to wake, and that made me careless, for just as I bent to the canoe, I let my foot blunder on a twig, and it cracked like shattering glass.  I grasped my knife and whirled.  The figure on the ground jerked, threw off its shrouding blanket, and stretched up.  It was not Pemaou.  It was the Ottawa girl Singing Arrow.

I did not drop my knife.  My thought was of decoy and ambush, which was no credit to me, for this girl had been faithful before.  But we train ourselves not to trust an Indian except of necessity.

“Are you alone?” I demanded.

She nodded, pressing her lips together and dimpling.  She feared me as little as a kitten might.

“I came to the Pottawatamie camp just after you left,” she volunteered.

And then I laughed, laughed as I had not done in days.  So this was the quarry that I had been stalking!  I had been under a long tension, and it was suddenly comfortable to be ridiculous.  I sat down and laughed again.

“Are you following Pierre?” I asked, sobering, and trying to be stern.

But she put her head sidewise and considered me.  She looked like a squirrel about to crack a nut.

“A hare may track a stag,” she announced judicially.  “I have followed you.  My back is bent like a worm with the aching of it, but I came faster than a man.  I have this for you,” and fumbling in her blouse she brought out a bulky packet addressed with my name.

I took it with the marvel that a child takes a sleight-of-hand toy and stared at the seal.

“From Cadillac!  From the commandant!” I ejaculated.

She nodded.  It was her moment of triumph, but she passed it without outward show.

“Read it.  I am sleepy,” she said, and yawning in my face she tumbled herself back into the blanket and closed her eyes.

The packet was well wrapped and secured, and I dug my way to the heart of it and found the written pages.  The letter began abruptly.

“Monsieur,” it said, “I send you strange tidings by a stranger messenger.  It is new to me to trust petticoats in matters of secrecy, but it is rumored that you set me the example, and that you carried off the Englishman dressed in this Singing Arrow’s clothes.  The Indian herself will tell me nothing.  That determined me to trust her.

“Briefly, you are followed.  That fire-eating English lad that you have with you—­I warrant that he has proved a porcupine to travel with—­must be of some importance.  At all events, an Englishman, who gives his name as Starling, has made his way here in pursuit.  He tells a fair tale.  He says that the lad, who is dear as a brother to him, is a cousin, who was captured in an Indian raid on the frontier.  As soon as he, Starling, learned of the capture, he started after them, and he has spent months searching the wilderness, as you would sift the sand of the sea.  He found the trail at last, and followed it here.  He begs that I send him on to you with a convoy.