Boone spread out his scouts in advance. The five, staying together as usual, and now acting independently, advanced through the woods near the Ohio. It was one of the hottest of July nights, and nature was restless and uneasy. The low clouds increased in number, and continually grew larger until they fused into one, and covered the heavens with a black blanket from horizon to horizon. From a point far off in the southwest came the low but menacing mutter of thunder. At distant intervals, lightning would cut the sky in a swift, vivid stroke. The black woods would stand out in every detail for a moment, and they would catch glimpses of the river's surface turned to fiery red. Then the night closed down again, thicker and darker than ever, and any object twenty yards before them would become only a part of the black blur. A light wind moaned among the trees, weirdly and without stopping. "It's a bad night for Colonel Clark's army," said Shif'less Sol. "Thar ain't any use o' our tryin' to hide the fact from one another, 'cause we all know it." "That's so, Sol," said Long Jim Hart, "but we've got to watch all the better 'cause of it. I've knowed you a long time, Solomon Hyde, an' you're a lazy, shiftless, ornery, contrary critter, but somehow or other the bigger the danger the better you be, an' I think that's what's happenin' now." If it had not been so dark Long Jim would have seen Shif'less Sol's pleased grin. Moreover the words of Jim Hart were true. The spirit of the shiftless one, great borderer that he was, rose to the crisis, but he said nothing. The little group continued to advance, keeping a couple of hundred yards or so from the bank of the Ohio, and stopping every ten or twelve minutes to listen. On such a night ears were of more use than eyes. The forest grew more dense as they advanced. It consisted chiefly of heavy beech and oak, with scattered underbrush of spice wood and pawpaw. It was the underbrush particularly that annoyed, since it offered the best hiding for a foe in ambush. Henry prayed for the moon and the stars, but both moon and stars remained on the other side of impenetrable clouds. It was only by the occasional flashes of lightning that they saw clearly and then it was but a fleeting glimpse. But it was uncommonly vivid lightning. They noticed that it always touched both forest and river with red fire, and the weird moaning of the wind, crying like a dirge, never ceased. It greatly affected the nerves of Paul, the most sensitive of the five, but the others, too, were affected by it.