On ran the men, the sound of their progress becoming less and less audible as they receded. Was he safe now? Pete's slow intelligence answered no. He was still fully alive to his danger. He might stay there for awhile, but not for long. Already, perhaps owing to his desperate running, he had an almost maddening thirst, a thirst which the sheer sight of the cool stream so near tantalized. Should he descend, satisfy his desire, and attempt to regain his place of hiding? No, for he might not seclude himself so successfully the next time. Then, with his face resting on his arm, he began to feel drowsy. Twisting his body about, he finally found himself in a position in which he could recline still close to the tree and rest a little, though his feet and legs, surcharged with blood, were painfully weighted downward. The forest about him was very quiet. Some bluebirds above his head were singing merrily. A gray squirrel with a fuzzy tail was perched inquiringly on the brown bough of a near-by pine. Pete reclined thus for several minutes, and then the objects about him appeared to be in a blur. The far off shouts, horn-blasts, and gun reports beat less insistently on his tired brain, and then he found himself playing with a kitten--the queerest, most amusing kitten--in the sunlight in front of his mother's door. He must have slept for hours, for when he opened his eyes the sun was sinking behind the top of a distant hill. He tried to draw his aching legs up higher and felt stinging pricks of pain from his hips to his toes, as his blood leaped into circulation again. After several efforts he succeeded in standing on the bough. To his pangs of thirst were now added those of hunger. For hours he stood thus. He saw the light of day die out, first on the landscape and later from the clear sky. Now, he told himself, under cover of night, he would escape, but something happened to prevent the attempt. Through the darkness he saw the flitting lights off many pine torches. They passed to and fro under the trees, sometimes quite near him, and as far as he could see up the mountain-sides they flickered like the sinister night-eyes of his doom. He stood till he felt as if he could do so no longer, and then he got down on the bough as before, and after hours of conscious hunger and thirst and cramping pains he slept again. Thus he passed that night, and when the golden rays of sunlight came piercing the gray mountain mists and flooding the landscape with its warm glory, Pete Warren, hearing the voices of sleepless revenge, now more numerous and harsh and packed with hate--hearing them on all sides from far and near--dared not stir. He remained perched in his leafy nook like some half-knowing, primeval thing, avoiding the flint-tipped arrows of the high-cheeked, straight-haired men lurking beneath. CHAPTER XVIII [Illustration: 9159]