About 4 o'clock in the afternoon
Far to the south something gleamed fitfully among the trees , but it was only marsh fire . None of these things disturbed him , and knowing that the wilderness was at peace he laid his head back on the turf and fell asleep again . At break of day he was up and away , and until afternoon he sped toward the south in the long running walk which frontiersmen and Indians could maintain for hours with ease . About 4 o'clock in the afternoon , he stopped as suddenly as if he had come to a river 's brink . He had struck a great trail , not a path made by three or four persons but by hundreds . He could see their road a hundred yards wide . Here so many feet had trodden that the grass was yet thinner than elsewhere ; there lay the bones of deer , eaten clean and thrown away .