In the centre of the ring, standing on one foot before our angry
Colonel, was Saunders.
"Now, what does this mean?" demanded Clark; "my eye is on you, and you've
boxed the compass in this last hour."
Saunders' jaw dropped.
"I'm guiding you right," he answered, with that sullenness which comes to
his kind from fear, "but a man will slip his bearings sometimes in this
country."
Clark's eyes shot fire, and he brought down the stock of his rifle with a
thud.
"By the eternal God!" he cried, "I believe you are a traitor. I've been
watching you every step, and you've acted strangely this morning."
"Ay, ay," came from the men round him.
"Silence!" cried Clark, and turned again to the cowering Saunders. "You
pretend to know the way to Kaskaskia, you bring us to the middle of the
Indian country where we may be wiped out at any time, and now you have
the damned effrontery to tell me that you have lost your way. I am a man
of my word," he added with a vibrant intensity, and pointed to the limbs
of a giant tree which stood at the edge of the distant forest. "I will
give you half an hour, but as I live, I will leave you hanging there."
The man's brown hand trembled as he clutched his rifle barrel.
"'Tis a hard country, sir," he said. "I'm lost. I swear it on the
evangels."
"A hard country!" cried Clark.
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