But the boy was an Indian, and accustomed to Indian difficulties and Indian expedients. He glanced rapidly around for some means of preservation; and, seeing a tree of some magnitude, and at no great distance, he resolved to try to reach it ere the coming fire had seized on the surrounding herbage, and seek for a refuge in its summit. With much difficulty, he forced his way through the tall rank grass that waved above his head, and the wild vines that were entangled with it in every direction; and he reached the foot of the tree just as the flames were beginning to scorch its outmost branches. He sprang upward; and, climbing with the agility of a squirrel, he was soon in the highest fork of the tree, and enabled to look down in security on the devastating fire beneath him. All around was one wide sea of ruddy flames, that shot up in forked and waving tongues high amid the heavy clouds of smoke. Happily for Lincoya, the herbage beneath his tree of refuge grew thin and scanty, and did not afford much food for the devouring elements; otherwise it must have consumed his retreat, and suffocated him even in its topmost boughs. As it was, the lower branches only were destroyed, and the boy was able to endure the heat and smoke until the roaring flames had passed beneath him, and he watched them driving onward in the wake of his flying friends.
To follow his companions that night was hopeless, for how could he traverse that red-hot plain? He, therefore, settled himself firmly among the sheltering branches, to one of which he bound himself with his belt of deer skin, and prepared to pass the night in that position, as he had passed many similar ones when he had been out on hunting expeditions with his father-in-law Jyanough.
Long he gazed on the strange aspect of the wide savanna, as it glowed in the darkness of night, with a lurid and fearful glare, that only made the gloom more visible. But weariness and exhaustion at length overcame him, and he fell asleep, and did not awake until the sun was high in the heavens. The prospect around him was changed, but the plain looked even more dreary and desolate than it appeared while the fire was at work on its clothing of grass. Now all was laid low, and smoking ashes alone covered the nakedness of the savanna. Lincoya gazed earnestly in every direction, that he might make sure of the route he must follow in order to rejoin his friends; and his attention was attracted by the figures of two men approaching towards the tree in which he sat, and apparently engage d in earnest conversation. For a moment his hopes led him to believe that they were Jyanough and Henrich, who had returned, probably, in search of him; and he was about to hail them with a loud and joyful cry. But the caution so early instilled into the mind of an Indian restrained him: and well it was for him that he had not thus given vent to his feelings. The men drew nearer, and he saw, to his amazement, that they were Coubitant--he whose death and burial had been so confidently reported, and Salon--the trusty Salon--to whom the conduct of the tribe had been deputed after the supposed death of the appointed leader.