I remarked their fierce, dark faces, and the long knives with which
they slashed and trimmed the flesh for their boucanning.
Shalah touched my hand, and I followed him into the wood. We climbed
again, and from the tinkle of the stream on my left I judged that we
were ascending to a higher shelf in the glen. The Indian moved very
carefully, as noiseless as the flight of an owl, and I marvelled at the
gift. In after days I was to become something of a woodsman, and track
as swiftly and silently as any man of my upbringing. But I never
mastered the Indian art by which the foot descending in the darkness on
something that will crackle checks before the noise is made. I could do
it by day, when I could see what was on the ground, but in the dark the
thing was beyond me. It is an instinct like a wild thing's, and
possible only to those who have gone all their days light-shod in the
forest.
Suddenly the slope and the trees ceased, and a new glare burst on our
eyes. This second shelf was smaller than the first, and as I blinked at
the light I saw that it held about a score of men. Torches made of pine
boughs dipped in tar blazed at the four corners of the assembly, and in
the middle on a boulder a man was sitting. He was speaking loudly, and
with passion, but I could not make him out.
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