You should have been long enough in
the woods by this time to know smoke when you see it. Why, there it is
curling up from the trees in a dozen--ay, in a score of places. There
must be hundreds of men out scouting or camping in them woods."
Harold looked fixedly again at the forests, but even now he could not
detect the signs which were so plain to the scout.
"You may call me as blind as a bat, Peter," he said with a laugh, "but I
can see nothing. Looking hard I imagine I can see a light mist here and
there, but I believe it is nothing but fancy."
"It's clear enough to me, lad, and to the redskins. What do you
say, chief?"
"Too much men," the Seneca replied sententiously.
For another minute or two he and Peter stood watching the forest, and
then in a few words consulted together as to the best line to follow to
avoid meeting the foe who, to their eyes, swarmed in the forest.
"It's mighty lucky," the hunter said as they turned to descend the hill,
which was covered with trees to its very summit, "that they're white men
and not redskins out in the woods, there. I don't say that there's not
many frontiersmen who know the way of the woods as well as the redskins.
I do myself, and when it comes to fighting we can lick 'em on their own
ground; but in scouting we aint nowhere--not the best of us. The redskin
seems to have an instinct more like that of an animal than a man. I
don't say as he can smell a man a mile off as a dog can do, but he seems
to know when the enemy's about; his ears can hear noises which we can't;
his eyes see marks on the ground when the keenest-sighted white man sees
nothing.
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