"A man would have to walk over it but
once to know it. I believe you are a damned traitor and perjurer,--in
spite of your oath, a British spy."
Saunders wiped the sweat from his brow on his buckskin sleeve.
"I reckon I could get the trace, Colonel, if you'd let me go a little way
into the prairie."
"Half an hour," said Clark, "and you'll not go alone." Sweeping his eye
over Bowman's company, he picked out a man here and a man there to go
with Saunders. Then his eye lighted on me. "Where's McChesney?" he
said. "Fetch McChesney."
I ran to get Tom, and seven of them went away, with Saunders in the
middle, Clark watching them like a hawk, while the men sat down in the
grass to wait. Fifteen minutes went by, and twenty, and twenty-five, and
Clark was calling for a rope, when some one caught sight of the squad in
the distance returning at a run. And when they came within hail it was
Saunders' voice we heard, shouting brokenly:--
"I've struck it, Colonel, I've struck the trace. There's a pecan at the
edge of the bottom with my own blaze on it."
"May you never be as near death again," said the Colonel, grimly, as he
gave the order to march.
The fourth day passed, and we left behind us the patches of forest and
came into the open prairie,--as far as the eye could reach a long, level
sea of waving green.
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