Braxton Wyatt may have suspected it, but he
said nothing, aware that it could not be prevented.
The five were well prepared. They carried a large supply of ammunition, a
blanket each, and jerked meat. If their food supplies gave out there was
the forest swarming with game, and they knew that it swarmed in the same
fashion all the way down to New Orleans. They would camp at sunset three
or four miles from the Spaniards, keeping watch the night through, and in
the morning it was easy enough to take up the trail of Alvarez and his
men, which, to their experienced eyes, was like a high road leading
through the forest.
One evening just as the sun was setting Henry parted some twining bushes
and looked over a cliff. The others came to his side and they, too, looked
as he was looking.
At their very feet lay the mighty Mississippi. They had seen it before,
but it was never so impressive as now. Great at any time it was in spring
flood, rolling a vast, yellow current down toward the Gulf. The waters
overflowed on the low, eastern shore, and it was so far across that they
could not see the further bank in the shadowed evening. The setting sun,
nevertheless, lighted up the middle of the current with blood-red gleams,
and the five gazed with a certain awe at the mighty stream, as it flowed
ever onward.
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