"O' course it wuz a rifle shot. Neither you nor I could be mistook about that." "And you noticed where it came from?" "Straight from the place where Paul and Tom and Long Jim Hart are." "Which may mean that their presence has been discovered and that they are besieged." "That's the way I look at it." "And we must make a rescue." "That's true, an' we've got to be so mighty keerful about it that we ain't took an' scalped and burned by the savages, afore we've had a single chance at makin' a rescue." The thought in the minds of the two was the same. They were sure now from the absence of the larger smoke column that the main force had gone south, but that the smaller had remained to take their comrades, whose presence, by some chance, they had discovered. They lay closely hidden for a while, and they heard the report of a second shot, followed by a mere shred of sound which they took to be an Indian yell, although they were not sure. "Ef the boys are besieged, an' we think they are," said the shiftless one, "they kin hold out quite a while even without our help. So I think, Henry, we'd better go an' see whether the main camp has broke up an' the cannon gone south. It won't be so hard to find out that, an' then we kin tell better what we want to do." "You're right, of course," replied Henry. "We'll have to leave our comrades for the time and go to the big camp." They curved again toward the south and west, keeping to the thickest part of the forest and using every possible device to hide their trail, knowing its full necessity, as the day was brilliant and one, unless under cover, could be seen from afar. Game started up in their path and Henry took it as new proof that the main body of the Indians had gone. Deer, scared away by the hunters, were so plentiful that they would return soon after the danger for them departed. Nevertheless both he and the shiftless one were apprehensive of wandering warriors who might see them from some covert, and their progress, of necessity, was slow. They came to several grassy openings, in one of which the buffalo were feeding, but Henry and his comrade always passed around such exposed places, even at the cost of greatly lengthening their journey. At one point they heard a slight sound in the forest, and being uncertain whether it was made by an enemy they remained crouched in the thicket at least a half-hour. Then they heard another faint report in the north and their keen ears told them it came from a point near the rocky hollow. "I can't make anything of it," whispered Henry, "except that the boys are besieged as we feared. I've tried to believe that the shots were fired by Indians at game, but I can't force my belief. The reports all come from the same place, and they mean exactly what we wish they didn't mean." "But they mean too," said the shiftless one, courageously, "that so long as we hear 'em the boys are holdin' out. The warriors wouldn't be shootin' off their guns fur nothin'."