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Labarthe was with me, and we took Singing Arrow's light canoe and packed it with supplies and merchandise. Then we breakfasted on meal and jerked meat and were ready to start. But the rest of the men were not yet astir, and the woman's house was silent. I walked to it and stood irresolute. I disliked to wake her. Yet I could not leave her without some message.
One day the skilful hunter met deep in the thickest forest an old bear and killed him with a single shot. The great arrow's sharp point pierced the mighty heart, and he fell dead at the hunter's feet. It was summer, and the bear's pelt was neither close nor even, still the archer drew it off, rolled it together into a hard bundle, and went on with the bear-skin on his back.
What boy has not thrilled at the tales of Greenwood men, the well-sped shaft, the arrow's low whispering flight, and the willow wand split at a hundred paces? Every boy goes through a period of barbarism, just as the nations have passed, and during that age he is stirred by the call of the bow. I, too, shot the toy bows of boyhood; shot with Indian youths in the Army posts of Texas and Arizona.
He had no inclination for gallant devoir, his eyes and thoughts were full of his late vision in the woods, he wished to reach home and dream; but in a moment he was again beside them, had taken their painter with a bow and an easy sentence, but neither with empressement nor heightened color, and, changing his course, was lending them a portion of the Arrow's swiftness in flight towards the Bawn.
At Ballena he stayed for the night, and was entertained with a more circumstantial account of a parti-colored demon who had been chased out of the village at arrow's point: but as he had not had time to check up the shortage in his clothes before leaving home, he did not recognize Pio under the description.
"Go now; your time has come," said the little brown bat on White Otter's scalp-lock. "Go now," echoed Red Arrow's charm. When nothing was to be seen of the land but the twinkle of the fires in the camp, they were lying in a deep washout under a bluff, which overlooked the hostile camp.
The road has made a sudden turn; and a valley, hitherto concealed by the mountains, opens unexpectedly. It is some three or four miles long; and the road traverses it straight as the arrow's flight, till it loses itself amid the rocks and foliage at the bottom of the mountain which you see lying across the valley.
"The destined hand doth strike the fated blow: Surely the arrow's fitted to the bow!" And he says: "The feathered seed for the wind delayeth, The wind above the garden swayeth, The garden of its burden knoweth, The burden falleth, sinketh, soweth." So the Vizier chuckled and nodded, saying, 'Right, right! aptly spoken, O youth of favour!
The truth of the old parrot's words seemed to be striking home; for the Doctor stood silent a minute, thinking. "But there are the note-books," he said presently: "I would have to go back to fetch them." "I have them here, Doctor," said I, speaking up "all of them." Again he pondered. "And Long Arrow's collection," he said. "I would have to take that also with me."
So he thought he was safe; but it turned out that Blue Arrow's father, a chief, had got into a row with Sun Boy, and the latter would not think of ratifying the boy's promise. So there was Morgan with his dozen men, in a nasty enough fix. He knew plenty of Indian talk to understand that they were discussing what they would do with him, and it wasn't pleasant.
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