"Afore moonrise, jest about when the night is darkest, 'less somethin' gits in the way. Here's another branch, Henry. Guess we'd better wade in it a right smart distance. You can't ever be too keerful about your trail." The branch, or brook, as it would have been called in older communities, was rather wide, about six inches deep and flowing over a smooth, gravelly bed. It was flowing in the general direction in which they wished to go, and they walked in the stream a full half mile. Then they emerged upon the bank, careless of wet feet and wet ankles, which they knew would soon dry under severe exercise, and continued their swift journey. The curiosity of the shiftless one about the primeval world had passed for the time, and like Henry he was concentrating all his energy and attention upon the present, which was full enough of work and danger. He and the young Hercules together made a matchless pair. He was second only to Henry in the skill and lore of the wilderness. He was a true son of the forest, and, though uneducated in the bookish sense, he was so full of wiles and cunning that he was the Ulysses of the five, and as such his fame had spread along the whole border, and among the Indian tribes. Hidden perhaps by his lazy manner, but underneath that yellow thatch of his the shiftless one was a thinker, a deep thinker, and a nobler thinker than the one who sat before Troy town, because his thoughts were to save the defenseless. "Henry," he said, "we're followed." Henry glanced back, and in the moonlit dusk he saw a score of forms, enlarged in the shadows, their eyes red and their teeth bare. "A wolf pack!" he exclaimed. "Shore ez you live," replied the shiftless one. "Reckon they've been follerin' us ever since we left the branch. Mebbe they never saw men afore an' don't know nothin' 'bout guns that kill at a distance, an' ag'in mebbe they've been driv off thar huntin' grounds by the warriors, an' think we kin take the place o' their reg'lar game." "Anyway I don't like it." "Neither do I. Look at that old fellow in the lead. Guess he's called a giant among 'em. I kin see the slaver fallin' from his mouth. He's thinkin' o' you, Henry, 'cause there's more meat on you than there is on me." "I don't know about that. You'd make a fine dish for the table of the wolf king. Roasted and served up whole they'd save you for the juicy finish, the last gorgeous touch to the feast." "Don't talk that way, Henry. You make me shiver all over. I ain't afeard o' a wolf, but ef I didn't hev a rifle, an' you wuzn't with me, I'd be plum' skeered at them twenty back thar, follerin' us lookin' at us an' slaverin'."