"But we'll kill our game outside. I've a notion that I don't want to shoot anythin' in here." "I understand you. It's too fine a place to have blood flowing in it." "That's jest the way I feel about it, Henry. You may laugh at me fur bein' a fool, but the notion sticks to me hard an' fast." "I'm not laughing at you. If you'll raise up a little, Sol, you can see the smoke of the main Indian campfire off there toward the northeast. It looks like a thread from here, and it's at least five miles away." "It's a big smoke, then, or we wouldn't see it at all, 'cause we can't make out that o' the smaller one nearer to the cave, though I reckon it's still thar." "Perhaps so, and the warriors may come this way, but we'll see 'em and hear 'em first. Look, Sol, those buffaloes, in their grazing, are coming straight toward us. The wind has certainly carried to them our odor, but they don't seem to be alarmed by it." "Jest another proof, Henry, that it's the real Garden o' Eden. Them buff'ler haven't seen or smelt a human bein' since Adam an' Eve left, an' ez that wuz a long time ago they've got over any feelin' o' fear o' people, ef they ever had it. Look at them deer, too, over thar, loafin' 'long through the high grass, an' not skeered o' anythin'. An' the wolves that follered us last night don't come here. Thar ain't a sign o' a wolf ever hevin' been in the valley." Henry laughed, but there was no trace of irony in the laugh. The shiftless one's vivid fancy or belief pleased him. It was possible, too, that Indians would not come there. It might be some sacred place of the old forgotten people who had built the mounds and who had been exterminated by the Indians. But the Indians were full of superstition, and often they feared and respected the sacred places of those whom they had slain. For the boldest of the warriors, avenging spirits might be hovering there, and they would fear them more than they would fear the white men with rifles. "Let's go up to the head of the valley," he said to Shif'less Sol. "If we keep back among the bushes we won't be seen." "All right," said his comrade. "I want to see that gate between the hills, that the creek comes from, an' I want to take a look, too, at that grove o' big trees growin' thar." Henry reckoned the length of the valley at two miles and its width at a half mile on the average, with the creek flowing down almost its exact center. At the head it narrowed fast, until it came to the gash between the hills, where grew the largest oaks and elms that he had ever seen. It was in truth a magnificent grove and it gave the shiftless one extreme delight which he expressed vocally. He surveyed the trees and the hills behind them with a measuring and comprehensive eye.