The camp was now quiet and the fire was sinking rapidly. Sentinels walked on every side, but Will could not see them from where he lay. A light wind blowing down from the mountains moaned through the thin forest. Clouds came up from the west, blotting out the horizon and making the sky a curving dome of blackness. Young William Clarke felt that it was good to have comrades in the immense desolation, and it strengthened his spirit to see the soldiers rolled in their blankets, their feet to the dying coals. Yet his trouble about the future came back. He and Boyd were in truth and reality prisoners. Captain Kenyon was friendly and kind, but he would not let them go on, because the Sioux and Cheyennes had barred all the trails and the formidable Red Cloud had given a warning that could not be ignored. Making another effort, he dismissed the thought a second time and just as the last coals were fading into the common blackness he fell asleep. He was awakened late in the night by a hand pushing gently but insistently against his shoulder. He was about to sit up abruptly, but the voice of Boyd whispered in his ear: "Be very careful! Make no noise! Release yourself from your blanket and then do what I say!" The hand fell away from his shoulder, and, moving his head a little, Clarke looked carefully over the camp. The coals where the fire had been were cold and dead, and no light shone there. The figures of the sleeping soldiers were dim in the dusk, but evidently they slept soundly, as not one of them stirred. He heard the regular breathing of those nearest to him, and the light step of the sentinel just beyond a clump of dwarf pines. "Sit up now," whispered Boyd, "and when the sentinel passes a little farther away we'll creep from the camp. Be sure you don't step on a stick or trip over anything. Keep close behind me. The night's as black as pitch, and it's our one chance to escape from friends who are too hospitable." Will saw the hunter slowly rise to a stooping position, and he did likewise. Then when the sound of the sentinel's step was lost at the far end of his beat, Boyd walked swiftly away from the camp and Will followed on his trail. The lad glanced back once, and saw that the dim figures by the dead fire did not stir. Weary and with the soothing wind blowing over them, they slept heavily. It was evident that the two who would go their own way had nothing to fear from them. There was now no bar to their departure, save the unhappy chance of being seen by the sentinel. A rod from the camp and Boyd lay flat upon the ground, Will, without the need of instruction, imitating him at once. The sentinel was coming back, but like his commander he was a soldier of the civil war, used to open battlefields, and he did not see the two shadows in the dusk. He reached the end of his beat and turning went back again, disappearing once more beyond the stunted pines.