"You wait here," ordered Sam, "while I get two or three more men and we will soon look up that kettle." Peleg suspected that the white Shawnee, in order to delay the quest of the hidden canoe and thereby give his foster-father and brother an opportunity to escape from the region, had suggested a visit to the tree where the cry of the owl had alarmed his father. In a brief time, however, Sam and his companions returned, and the hunter roughly ordered the stranger to lead the way. CHAPTER XIV THE HIDDEN CANOE While Sam Oliver had been gone to the fort to secure a few of his comrades to accompany him, the young Indian, or white, or white Indian--Peleg was uncertain to which class his visitor really belonged--entered with apparent confidence into conversation with the young scout. In his broken English he related many things concerning the life which he had lived in the wigwam of his foster father. Peleg was impressed by the increasing facility with which the white Shawnee, as the young brave preferred to call himself, was using the language of the whites. It may have been that the words he now heard recalled to his mind expressions which had almost faded from his memory. At all events he talked more freely and with an increasing ability to express himself. "Me fader hear owl cry. He know from strange cry that some die or be pris'ner. He old man. He 'fraid. He say go back up river. Me broder he say no. Me say no. Me fader still 'fraid, but he keep him promise." "What was his promise?" inquired Peleg. "He say he take us on warpath to help keep palefaces from going into Kantuckee. He no wan' go, but he say he go. We all lie down sleep. Pretty quick me fader wake up. Me fader wake me broder. Wake me, too." "What was the trouble?" asked Peleg. "Me fader have sleep and see----" "What do you mean, he had a dream?" "That so," replied the visitor, nodding his head. "Me fader have dream." "What did he dream?" "He say we go to Kantuckee, we die. Me fader cry. He no wan' go on warpath." "But you came," suggested Peleg. His visitor nodded and continued: "Me fader say he keep him promise. But he say more. He say we go back to wigwam. Go quick. He good man. Heap good man. He keep him promise. Me broder say me fader mus' keep him promise now." "So you came?" "We go on warpath. Me fader say he go quick. No stay any more where we sleep." "So you started right away, did you?" "We go on warpath all night. When light come we turn to place where white man build fort." "Are there many Shawnees here?" The young visitor, nodding, said: "Pretty quick, heap Shawnee come." He held up three and then four fingers to express the idea that the Indian bands were advancing in parties of three or more, and at some prearranged place or by some well-known signals the scattered little parties would be brought together and one large band formed.