The sight which Joe had seen horrified him, for several moments,
into helpless inaction. He lay breathing heavily, impotent, in an
awful rage. As he remained there stunned by the shock, he gazed up
through the open space in the leaves, trying to still his fury, to
realize the situation, to make no hasty move. The soft blue of the
sky, the fleecy clouds drifting eastward, the fluttering leaves and
the twittering birds--all assured him he was wide awake. He had
found Girty's den where so many white women had been hidden, to see
friends and home no more. He had seen the renegade sleeping, calmly
sleeping like any other man. How could the wretch sleep! He had seen
Kate. It had been the sight of her that had paralyzed him. To make a
certainty of his fears, he again raised himself to peep into the
hole. As he did so a faint cry came from within.
Girty lay on a buffalo robe near a barred door. Beyond him sat Kate,
huddled in one corner of the cabin. A long buckskin thong was
knotted round her waist, and tied to a log. Her hair was matted and
tangled, and on her face and arms were many discolored bruises.
Worse still, in her plaintive moaning, in the meaningless movement
of her head, in her vacant expression, was proof that her mind had
gone. She was mad. Even as an agonizing pity came over Joe, to be
followed by the surging fire of rage, blazing up in his breast, he
could not but thank God that she was mad! It was merciful that Kate
was no longer conscious of her suffering.
Like leaves in a storm wavered Joe's hands as he clenched them until
the nails brought blood. "Be calm, be cool," whispered his monitor,
Wetzel, ever with him in spirit. But God! Could he be cool? Bounding
with lion-spring he hurled his heavy frame against the door.
Crash! The door was burst from its fastenings.
Girty leaped up with startled yell, drawing his knife as he rose. It
had not time to descend before Joe's second spring, more fierce even
than the other, carried him directly on top of the renegade. As the
two went down Joe caught the villain's wrist with a grip that
literally cracked the bones. The knife fell and rolled away from the
struggling men. For an instant they tumbled about on the floor,
clasped in a crushing embrace. The renegade was strong, supple,
slippery as an eel. Twice he wriggled from his foe. Gnashing his
teeth, he fought like a hyena. He was fighting for life--life, which
is never so dear as to a coward and a murderer. Doom glared from
Joe's big eyes, and scream after scream issued from the renegade's
white lips.
Terrible was this struggle, but brief. Joe seemingly had the
strength of ten men. Twice he pulled Girty down as a wolf drags a
deer. He dashed him against the wall, throwing him nearer and
nearer the knife. Once within reach of the blade Joe struck the
renegade a severe blow on the temple and the villain's wrestling
became weaker. Planting his heavy knee on Girty's breast, Joe
reached for the knife, and swung it high. Exultantly he cried, mad
with lust for the brute's blood.
But the slight delay saved Girty's life.
The knife was knocked from Joe's hand and he leaped erect to find
himself confronted by Silvertip. The chief held a tomahawk with
which he had struck the weapon from the young man's grasp, and, to
judge from his burning eyes and malignant smile, he meant to brain
the now defenseless paleface.
In a single fleeting instant Joe saw that Girty was helpless for the
moment, that Silvertip was confident of his revenge, and that the
situation called for Wetzel's characteristic advice, "act like
lightnin'."
Swifter than the thought was the leap he made past Silvertip. It
carried him to a wooden bar which lay on the floor. Escape was easy,
for the door was before him and the Shawnee behind, but Joe did not
flee! He seized the bar and rushed at the Indian. Then began a duel
in which the savage's quickness and cunning matched the white man's
strength and fury. Silvertip dodged the vicious swings Joe aimed at
him; he parried many blows, any one of which would have crushed his
skull. Nimble as a cat, he avoided every rush, while his dark eyes
watched for an opening. He fought wholly on the defensive, craftily
reserving his strength until his opponent should tire.
At last, catching the bar on his hatchet, he broke the force of the
blow, and then, with agile movement, dropped to the ground and
grappled Joe's legs. Long before this he had drawn his knife, and
now he used it, plunging the blade into the young man's side.
Cunning and successful as was the savage's ruse, it failed signally,
for to get hold of the Shawnee was all Joe wanted. Feeling the sharp
pain as they fell together, he reached his hand behind him and
caught Silvertip's wrist. Exerting all his power, he wrenched the
Indian's arm so that it was not only dislocated, but the bones
cracked.
Silvertip saw his fatal mistake, but he uttered no sound. Crippled,
though he was, he yet made a supreme effort, but it was as if he had
been in the hands of a giant. The lad handled him with remorseless
and resistless fury. Suddenly he grasped the knife, which Silvertip
had been unable to hold with his crippled hand, and thrust it deeply
into the Indian's side.
All Silvertip's muscles relaxed as if a strong tension had been
removed. Slowly his legs straightened, his arms dropped, and from
his side gushed a dark flood. A shadow crept over his face, not dark
nor white, but just a shadow. His eyes lost their hate; they no
longer saw the foe, they looked beyond with gloomy question, and
then were fixed cold in death. Silvertip died as he had lived--a
chief.
Joe glared round for Girty. He was gone, having slipped away during
the fight. The lad turned to release the poor prisoner, when he
started back with a cry of fear. Kate lay bathed in a pool of
blood--dead. The renegade, fearing she might be rescued, had
murdered her, and then fled from the cabin.
Almost blinded by horror, and staggering with weakness, Joe turned
to leave the cabin. Realizing that he was seriously, perhaps
dangerously, wounded he wisely thought he must not leave the place
without weapons. He had marked the pegs where the renegade's rifle
hung, and had been careful to keep between that and his enemies. He
took down the gun and horns, which were attached to it, and, with
one last shuddering glance at poor Kate, left the place.
He was conscious of a queer lightness in his head, but he suffered
no pain. His garments were dripping with blood. He did not know how
much of it was his, or the Indian's. Instinct rather than sight was
his guide. He grew weaker and weaker; his head began to whirl, yet
he kept on, knowing that life and freedom were his if he found
Whispering Winds. He gained the top of the ridge; his eyes were
blurred, his strength gone. He called aloud, and then plunged
forward on his face. He heard dimly, as though the sound were afar
off, the whine of a dog. He felt something soft and wet on his face.
Then consciousness left him.
When he regained his senses he was lying on a bed of ferns under a
projecting rock. He heard the gurgle of running water mingling with
the song of birds. Near him lay Mose, and beyond rose a wall of
green thicket. Neither Whispering Winds nor his horse was visible.
He felt a dreamy lassitude. He was tired, but had no pain. Finding
he could move without difficulty, he concluded his weakness was more
from loss of blood than a dangerous wound. He put his hand on the
place where he had been stabbed, and felt a soft, warm compress such
as might have been made by a bunch of wet leaves. Some one had
unlaced his hunting-shirt--for he saw the strings were not as he
usually tied them--and had dressed the wound. Joe decided, after
some deliberation, that Whispering Winds had found him, made him as
comfortable as possible, and, leaving Mose on guard, had gone out to
hunt for food, or perhaps back to the Indian encampment. The rifle
and horns he had taken from Girty's hut, together with Silvertip's
knife, lay beside him.
As Joe lay there hoping for Whispering Winds' return, his
reflections were not pleasant. Fortunate, indeed, he was to be
alive; but he had no hope he could continue to be favored by
fortune. Odds were now against his escape. Girty would have the
Delawares on his trail like a pack of hungry wolves. He could not
understand the absence of Whispering Winds. She would have died
sooner than desert him. Girty had, perhaps, captured her, and was
now scouring the woods for him.
"I'll get him next time, or he'll get me," muttered Joe, in bitter
wrath. He could never forgive himself for his failure to kill the
renegade.
The recollection of how nearly he had forever ended Girty's brutal
career brought before Joe's mind the scene of the fight. He saw
again Buzzard Jim's face, revolting, unlike anything human. There
stretched Silvertip's dark figure, lying still and stark, and there
was Kate's white form in its winding, crimson wreath of blood.
Hauntingly her face returned, sad, stern in its cold rigidity.
"Poor girl, better for her to be dead," he murmured. "Not long will
she be unavenged!"
His thoughts drifted to the future. He had no fear of starvation,
for Mose could catch a rabbit or woodchuck at any time. When the
strips of meat he had hidden in his coat were gone, he could start a
fire and roast more. What concerned him most was pursuit. His trail
from the cabin had been a bloody one, which would render it easily
followed. He dared not risk exertion until he had given his wound
time to heal. Then, if he did escape from Girty and the Delawares,
his future was not bright. His experiences of the last few days had
not only sobered, but brought home to him this real border life.
With all his fire and daring he new he was no fool. He had eagerly
embraced a career which, at the present stage of his training, was
beyond his scope--not that he did not know how to act in sudden
crises, but because he had not had the necessary practice to quickly
and surely use his knowledge.
Bitter, indeed, was his self-scorn when he recalled that of the
several critical positions he had been in since his acquaintance
with Wetzel, he had failed in all but one. The exception was the
killing of Silvertip. Here his fury had made him fight as Wetzel
fought with only his every day incentive. He realized that the
border was no place for any save the boldest and most experienced
hunters--men who had become inured to hardship, callous as to death,
keen as Indians. Fear was not in Joe nor lack of confidence; but he
had good sense, and realized he would have done a wiser thing had he
stayed at Fort Henry. Colonel Zane was right. The Indians were
tigers, the renegades vultures, the vast untrammeled forests and
plains their covert. Ten years of war had rendered this wilderness a
place where those few white men who had survived were hardened to
the spilling of blood, stern even in those few quiet hours which
peril allowed them, strong in their sacrifice of all for future
generations.
A low growl from Mose broke into Joe's reflections. The dog had
raised his nose from his paws and sniffed suspiciously at the air.
The lad heard a slight rustling outside, and in another moment was
overjoyed at seeing Whispering Winds. She came swiftly, with a
lithe, graceful motion, and flying to him like a rush of wind, knelt
beside him. She kissed him and murmured words of endearment.
"Winds, where have you been?" he asked her, in the mixed English and
Indian dialect in which they conversed.
She told him the dog had led her to him two evenings before. He was
insensible. She had bathed and bandaged his wound, and remained with
him all that night. The next day, finding he was ill and delirious,
she decided to risk returning to the village. If any questions
arose, she could say he had left her. Then she would find a way to
get back to him, bringing healing herbs for his wound and a soothing
drink. As it turned out Girty had returned to the camp. He was
battered and bruised, and in a white heat of passion. Going at once
to Wingenund, the renegade openly accused Whispering Winds of aiding
her paleface lover to escape. Wingenund called his daughter before
him, and questioned her. She confessed all to her father.
"Why is the daughter of Wingenund a traitor to her race?" demanded
the chief.
"Whispering Winds is a Christian."
Wingenund received this intelligence as a blow. He dismissed Girty
and sent his braves from his lodge, facing his daughter alone.
Gloomy and stern, he paced before her.
"Wingenund's blood might change, but would never betray. Wingenund
is the Delaware chief," he said. "Go. Darken no more the door of
Wingenund's wigwam. Let the flower of the Delawares fade in alien
pastures. Go. Whispering Winds is free!"
Tears shone brightly in the Indian girl's eyes while she told Joe
her story. She loved her father, and she would see him no more.
"Winds is free," she whispered. "When strength returns to her master
she can follow him to the white villages. Winds will live her life
for him."
"Then we have no one to fear?" asked Joe.
"No redman, now that the Shawnee chief is dead."
"Will Girty follow us? He is a coward; he will fear to come alone."
"The white savage is a snake in the grass."
Two long days followed, during which the lovers lay quietly in
hiding. On the morning of the third day Joe felt that he might risk
the start for the Village of Peace. Whispering Winds led the horse
below a stone upon which the invalid stood, thus enabling him to
mount. Then she got on behind him.
The sun was just gilding the horizon when they rode out of the woods
into a wide plain. No living thing could be seen. Along the edge of
the forest the ground was level, and the horse traveled easily.
Several times during the morning Joe dismounted beside a pile of
stones or a fallen tree. The miles were traversed without serious
inconvenience to the invalid, except that he grew tired. Toward the
middle of the afternoon, when they had ridden perhaps twenty-five
miles, they crossed a swift, narrow brook. The water was a beautiful
clear brown. Joe made note of this, as it was an unusual
circumstance. Nearly all the streams, when not flooded, were green
in color. He remembered that during his wanderings with Wetzel they
had found one stream of this brown, copper-colored water. The lad
knew he must take a roundabout way to the village so that he might
avoid Indian runners or scouts, and he hoped this stream would prove
to be the one he had once camped upon.
As they were riding toward a gentle swell or knoll covered with
trees and shrubbery, Whispering Winds felt something warm on her
hand, and, looking, was horrified to find it covered with blood.
Joe's wound had opened. She told him they must dismount here, and
remain until he was stronger. The invalid himself thought this
conclusion was wise. They would be practically safe now, since they
must be out of the Indian path, and many miles from the encampment.
Accordingly he got off the horse, and sat down on a log, while
Whispering Winds searched for a suitable place in which to erect a
temporary shelter.
Joe's wandering gaze was arrested by a tree with a huge knotty
formation near the ground. It was like many trees, but this
peculiarity was not what struck Joe. He had seen it before. He never
forgot anything in the woods that once attracted his attention. He
looked around on all sides. Just behind him was an opening in the
clump of trees. Within this was a perpendicular stone covered with
moss and lichens; above it a beech tree spread long, graceful
branches. He thrilled with the remembrance these familiar marks
brought. This was Beautiful Spring, the place where Wetzel rescued
Nell, where he had killed the Indians in that night attack he would
never forget.