noon
Always the others followed , and no sound whatever came from the file of seven which was really the file of eight . The seven heralds traveled all night and all of the next day , always through forest , and at no time was the eighth figure in the file more than four hundred yards behind them . The Indian , through centuries of forest life , had gifts of insight and of physical faculties amounting to a sixth sense , yet the keenest among them never suspected , for an instant , that they were eight and not seven . At noon they sat down in the dry grass of a tiny prairie and ate dried deer meat . Henry , in the edge of the woods a quarter of a mile away , also ate dried deer meat . When the seven finished their food and resumed the march the eighth at the same time finished his food and resumed the march . Nothing told the seven that the eighth was there , no voice of the wood , no whisper from Manitou .