The four went on now with measured tread under the dusky heavens, over hillocks, down little valleys, and across brooks, which they leaped with flying feet. It seemed that they would never tire, but the trained warriors behind them were no less enduring. Once, twice, thrice they caught sight of them, and when a longer period of invisibility passed they knew, nevertheless, that they were still there. Now Long Jim suddenly wavered, but gathered himself together in an instant and continued his long leaps. Henry glanced at him and saw a patch of red on the sleeve of his buckskin hunting shirt. "You've been hit, Jim," he said. "It's nuthin'," said Long Jim doggedly, but he staggered again as he spoke. "Turn to the north, Jim," said Henry sharply. "We'll come for you, too!" Long Jim lifted a face of agony to the heavens. It was not agony of the body, but agony of the spirit, because he could not go on with the others. "Go, Jim, while they can't see you," repeated Henry. Long Jim waved his hand in a gesture of farewell, and, turning abruptly, disappeared in the bushes as quickly as if great waters had closed over him. The three, who had been a minute before the four, did not look back. There were still life and strength in them, and the power to run. The Ohio could not be far away now, and they ought to strike it before morning. "I'd like to stop an' fight," breathed Shif'less Sol. "I don't partickerly mind bein' chased sometimes, but I do mind bein' chased all the way back to New Or-lee-yuns." Henry, despite their desperate situation, could not withhold a smile, which, however, was hidden from the shiftless one by the darkness. "No choice seems to be left to us," he said. "It's run, Sol, run and keep on running." A groan of weariness from the shiftless one was his only reply. But he kept by the side of Henry. Tom Ross was on the other side, and the three flitted through the bushes with a long swinging stride that still covered ground at a remarkable rate. Once they came to low, marshy soil, a swamp almost, where back water from the Ohio or the creek evidently stood in flood time, and they were forced to curve about, thus giving their pursuers a chance to come diagonally and to make a great gain upon them. As they turned due south, skirting the side of the marsh, Tom Ross was in the woods furthest away from the soft ground. A rifle shot from some point deeper in the forest was fired at him, but the bullet only whistled by his ear and passed on to be lost in the marsh. Henry saw a dusky figure spring from the darkness and hurl itself upon Tom. He and the shiftless one instantly whirled about to help their comrade, but Tom and the warrior were now rolling over and over in the struggle of life and death.