When he had penetrated the dark backwoods of the Black Forest tangled underbrush, windfalls and gullies crossed his path and rendered fast trailing impossible.

Before these almost impassible barriers he stopped and peered on all sides, studying the lay of the land, the deadfalls, the gorges, and all the time keeping in mind the probable route of the redskins.

Then he turned aside to avoid the roughest travelling.

Sometimes these detours were only a few hundred feet long; often they were miles; but nearly always he struck the trail again.

This almost superhuman knowledge of the Indian's ways of traversing the forest, which probably no man could have possessed without giving his life to the hunting of Indians, was the one feature of Wetzel's woodcraft which placed him so far above other hunters, and made him so dreaded by the savages.
Descending a knoll he entered a glade where the trees grew farther apart and the underbrush was only knee high.