“Attacked? by whom?”

He faced me with undisguised surprise, a sarcastic smile curling his grim mouth.  His hand swept along the western sky-line.

“By those red spies hiding behind that ridge of sand,” he answered shortly.  “Boy, where are your eyes not to have seen that every step we have taken this day has been but by sufferance of the Pottawattomies?  Not for an hour since leaving camp have we marched out of shot from their guns; it means treachery, yet I can scarce tell where or how.  If they have spared us this long, there is some good Indian reason for it.”

I glanced along that apparently desolate sandbank, barely a hundred feet away, feeling a thrill of uneasiness sweep over me at the revelation of his words.  My eyes saw nothing strange nor suspicious; but I could not doubt his well-trained instinct.

“It makes my flesh creep,” I admitted; “yet surely the others do not know.  Hear how the Frenchman chatters in our rear!”

“The young fool!” he muttered, as the sound of a light laugh reached us; “it will prove no jest, ere we are out of this again.  Yet, Wayland,” and his voice grew stronger, “the red devils must indeed mean to pass us free,—­for there is Fort Dearborn, and, unless my sight deceive me, the flag is up.”

I lifted my eyes eagerly, and gazed northward where his finger pointed.

CHAPTER X

A LANE OF PERIL

We passed a group of young cottonwoods, the only trees I had noted along the shore; and a few hundred feet ahead of us, the ridge of sand, which had obscured our westward view so long, gradually fell away, permitting the eye to sweep across the wide expanse of level plain until halted by a distant row of stunted trees that seemed to line a stream of some importance.  As Captain Wells spoke, my glance, which had been fixed upon these natural objects, was instantly attracted by a strange scene of human activity that unfolded to the north and west.

The land before us lay flat and low, with the golden sun of the early afternoon resting hot upon it, revealing each detail in an animated panorama wherein barbarism and civilization each bore a conspicuous part.  The Fort was fully a mile and a half distant, and I could distinguish little of its outward appearance, save that it seemed low and solidly built, like a stockade of logs set upon end in the ground.  It appeared gloomy, grim, inhospitable, with its gates tightly closed, and no sign of life anywhere along its dull walls; yet my heart was thrilled at catching the bright colors of the garrison flag as the western breeze rippled its folds against the blue background of the sky.

But it was outside those log barriers that our eyes encountered scenes of the greatest interest,—­a mingling of tawdry decoration and wild savagery, where fierce denizens of forest and plain made their barbaric show.