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So videttes were stationed several hundred yards down the road with a picket post of four men, between the outside sentinels and the company, as reserve. A large pine thicket was to our right, while on the left was an old field with here and there a few wild cherry trees. The cherries being ripe, some of the men had gone up in the trees to treat themselves to this luscious little fruit.
I followed in boylike imitation, searching every thicket for alien form and color, and yearning for stature and responsibility. As for poor Weldon, he would stride for hours at a time with eyes fixed ahead, a wild figure, ragged and fringed. And we knew that the soul within him was torn with thoughts of his dead wife and of his child in captivity.
But there was no one to oppose his escape; and after following the road a little way up the river, he turned aside into a thicket of shrubs on the nearly precipitous bank, and sat down to recover the breath he had lost more from dismay than exertion. The light grew. All at once he descried, far down the river, the steeples of the city.
They were trusting all to the thicket in which they had pitched their camp; and, being hungry and wearied no doubt, were for the moment off their guard. Some fantasy decided me not to disturb them for a moment a sort of curiosity to hear what they would say, and, if possible, discover their whence and whither.
A third was parching some corn found in a thrown-away feed box, and congratulating themselves upon the lucky find. Finally they came out upon the banks of Stone River at the place to which Si had wandered during the night. Si recognized it at once, and also the voices that came from behind a little thicket of paw paws as those of the men with whom he had had the squabble.
She was always on horseback now, scanning every feature of the landscape, searching of course for him. She did not pass a cactus, or a thicket of mezquit, or a bowlder without anxious examination. She imagined herself finding him helpless with hunger, or passing him unseen and leaving him to die.
As he reached the opposite bank, however, the deer freed itself from the tree and plunged into a thicket. The king, with his sword in his hand, followed quickly, but no deer could he see. Instead, he found, lying on the ground beyond the thicket, a beautiful youth clad in a deer-skin. He was panting as if after a long run. The king stood still in surprise and the youth sprang to his feet.
No Indian tribe on the war-path ever strained every sense more keenly to watch, surround, and surprise the foe. And the hand-to-hand fray! What delight it was to burst from the shelter of the thicket and touch with our poles two, three, or four of the surprised enemies ere they thought of defence!
One of the three rode forward to stop my passage, and the other two rode round to the back of the thicket to get behind me. I then saw that I had separated them, and could gain a start upon them by riding back again, which I did, as fast as I could, and they immediately gave chase. The result you saw. Between us we have broken up the gang; for both these fellows seem dead, or nearly so."
They all ran up to where the animals lay dead, and as soon as they had reloaded their rifles, Alfred and Martin went on the track of the one that was badly wounded. They had forced their way through the thicket for some fifty yards, guided by the track of the animal, when they started back at the loud growl of some beast.
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