The same unseen force
that had compelled him to wait and watch for his foes a short time
before seemed urging him now to follow the strange snowshoe trail.
Enemy or friend the maker of those tracks would at least be armed.
The thought of what a rifle and a few cartridges would mean to him
and Celie now brought a low cry of decision from him. He turned
quickly to Celie.
"He's going east--and we ought to go north to find the cabin," he
told her, pointing to the trail. "But we'll follow him. I want his
rifle. I want it more than anything else in this world, now that
I've got you. We'll follow--"
If there had been a shadow of hesitation in his mind it was ended
in that moment. From behind them there came a strange hooting cry.
It was not a yell such as they had heard before. It was a booming
far-reaching note that had in it the intonation of a drum--a sound
that made one shiver because of its very strangeness. And then,
from farther west, it came--
"Hoom--Hoom--Ho-o-o-o-o-m-m-m-m--"
In the next half minute it seemed to Philip that the cry was
answered from half a dozen different quarters.
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