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"It is he, Sol! It is he!" he whispered in intense excitement. "Yes, Henry," replied the shiftless one, "it's the teacher." "Do you think his presence here means Wareville has been destroyed by Bird?" "I'm hopin' that it doesn't, Henry." Shif'less Sol spoke steadily, but Henry could read the fear in his mind, and the reply made his own fears all the stronger.
Paul was panting, and being the younger and smaller of the two his strength was now failing. Henry felt his comrade dragging upon his hand. If he freed himself from Paul's grasp he could run faster, but he remembered his silent resolve to take Paul back to his people. Even were it not for those others at Wareville he could never desert his friend at such a moment.
I'd hate to be in the place of the savages left in that tree." The wonder of the new and unknown ally soon spread through Wareville, and reached Lucy Upton as it reached others. A thought came to her and she was about to speak of it, but she stopped, fearing ridicule, and merely listened to the excited talk going on all about her.
Paul and Henry were on their way from Wareville, their home, with horses hearing powder for Marlowe, the nearest settlement, nearly a hundred miles away.
They knew, also, that the charge in which they were about to take part would offer as much danger as anything they had ever met. It is likely that every one of them thought of Wareville, and their kin, but they said nothing.
A sight of his cheerful face was considered good enough to cure chills and fever, and for the matter of that he was an expert hand with both ax and rifle. His uses in Wareville were not merely mental and spiritual. He was at all times able and willing to earn his own bread with his own strong hands, though the others seldom permitted him to do so. Henry entered school with some reluctance.
These parties were not to make any demonstration, lest the settlers be put on their guard, but, after obtaining their information, were to retire as silently as they had come. Braxton Wyatt had promptly secured command of the little force sent toward Wareville, taking with him as lieutenant a young renegade, a kindred spirit named Early. Strange emotions agitated Wyatt when he started.
His muscular fiber was not so enduring as that of Henry, and the wilderness did not make so keen an appeal to him. Their hardships were beginning to weigh upon him and he thought all the time of Wareville, and the comfortable little log houses and the certain and easy supplies of food. Henry knew what was on his comrade's mind but he did not upbraid him for weakness of spirit.
The soil was now to respond to its trial, or to fail. This was the vital question to Wareville. The game, in the years to come, must disappear, the forest would be cut down, but the qualities of the earth would remain; if it produced well, it would form the basis of a nation, if not, it would be better to let all the work of the last year go and seek another home elsewhere.
In another year the forest would be springing up where Wareville had been, and the wolf and the fox would prowl among the charred timbers. And among the bleaching bones would be those of his own mother and sister and Lucy Upton if they were not taken away for a worse fate. He endured the keenest thrill of agony that life had yet held for him.
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