When he had gone about fifty yards he uttered a shout, long, swelling and full of warning. Then he turned to his right and crashed through the undergrowth, purposely making a noise that the pursuing warriors could not fail to hear. Ross and the others, he knew, would be aroused instantly by his cry and would take measures of safety. Now the savages would be likely to follow him alone, and he noted by the sounds that they had turned aside to do so. At this moment Henry Ware felt nothing but exultation that he, a boy, should prove himself a match for all the cunning of the forest-bred, and he thought not at all of the pursuit that came so fiercely behind him. He ran swiftly and now directly more than a mile from the camp of his friends. Then the inherited instinct that had served him so well failed; it could not warn him of the deep little river that lay straight across his path flowing toward the Mississippi. He came out upon its banks and was ready to drop down in its waters, but he saw that before he could reach the farther shore he would be a target for his pursuers. He hesitated and was about to turn at a sharp angle, but the warriors emerged from the forest. It was then too late. The savages uttered a shout of triumph, the long, ferocious, whining note, so terrible in its intensity and meaning, and Henry, raising his rifle, fired at a painted breast. The next moment they were hurled upon him in a brown mass. He felt a stunning blow upon the head, sparks flew before his eyes, and the world reeled away into darkness. CHAPTER XII THE PRIMITIVE MAN When Henry came back to his world he was lying upon the ground, with his head against a log, and about him was a circle of brown faces, cold, hard, expressionless and apparently devoid of human feeling; pity and mercy seemed to be unknown qualities there. But the boy met them with a gaze as steady as their own, and then he glanced quickly around the circle. There was no other prisoner and he saw no ghastly trophy; then his comrades had escaped, and, deep satisfaction in his heart, he let his head fall back upon the log. They could do now as they chose with him, and whatever it might be he felt that he had no cause to fear it.