"Did you hear?" asked the shiftless one, in a significant tone.
"Hear what?" asked Henry, who had been deep in thought.
"The wolf howl, just a very little cry, very far away an' under
the horizon, but thar all the same. Listen, thar she goes
ag'in!"
Henry bent his ear and distinctly heard the faint, whining note,
and then it came a third time.
He looked tip at Shif'less Sol, and his face grew white -- but
not for himself.
"Yes," said Shif'less Sol. He understood the look. We are
pursued. Them wolves howlin' are the Iroquois. What do you
reckon we're goin' to do, Henry?"
"Fight!" replied the youth, with fierce energy. "Beat 'em off!"
"How?"
Henry circled the little oasis with the eye of a general, and his
plan came.
"You'll stand here, where the earth gives a footing," he said,
"you, Solomon Hyde, as brave a man as I ever saw, and with you
will be Paul Cotter, Tom Ross, Jim Hart, and Henry Ware, old
friends of yours. Carpenter will at once lead the women and
children on ahead, and perhaps they will not hear the battle that
is going to be fought here."
A smile of approval, slow, but deep and comprehensive, stole over
the face of Solomon Hyde, surnamed, wholly without fitness, the
shiftless one.
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