A LOVERS' MEETING.
The reader will recollect that we left Harvey Catlett, the young scout,
searching for John Darknight's trail on the banks of the Maumee. We will
now return to him.
For a long time the youth prosecuted his search with vigor, confident
that he would soon be enabled to strike the trail and start in pursuit
of the treacherous guide, whose hands had, he doubted not, taken Kate
Merriweather from the camp. But the minutes passed without bringing him
success, and he at last began to fear that the abductor had not landed
at any point opposite the bivouac.
With this idea gaining strength in his mind, he resolved to rejoin his
companion and suggest new operations. But Oscar Parton did not respond
to his oft-repeated signals, and the young scout sought him in turn
until the gray streaks of light announced the dawn of another day. He
did not hear the boat that drifted past him in the night, nor catch a
sound of the struggle between the living and the dead which was taking
place on board.
He was inclined to charge Oscar Parton with desertion, attributing it to
the young man's zeal for Kate's welfare, for whom he--Oscar--preferred
perhaps to hunt alone.
"Well, let him go!" Catlett said at last, standing on the shore with the
daylight in his face. "If he does not like to trail with me, I am sure
that I will not lift a hand against him. He might have been a stumbling
block, any way, and on the whole I am not sorry that he has rid me of
himself."
Speaking thus--as the reader knows, unjustly--of Oscar Parton, the young
scout started up the river. A few steps brought him to a rifle which lay
on the ground. A glance told him that it belonged to the man whom he had
just charged with desertion; but now he regretted his words. The
discovery of the weapon told him that Parton was in trouble.
His keen eyes, used to the woods and their trails, could not show him
any signs of a struggle, for the tide had removed the stranding place of
the canoe, and after a long and unsuccessful search, Catlett looked
mystified. He looked at the rifle, but it told no story of its owner's
mishaps; it lay in his hands dumb--provokingly so.
"It beats me!" were the only audible words that escaped him, after a
long silence of study and conjecture.
Then he thrust the weapon into the hollow of a tree near by, and started
into the forest.
He had another mystery to solve besides Kate Merriweather's
abduction--Oscar Parton's whereabouts. He felt assured, however, that
the settler's daughter had fallen into Darknight's hands, and it was
known to him that the guide and James Girty were staunch friends.
It was toward the renegade's cabin, ten miles distant, that the scout
hastened. He examined the ground over which he walked, and the light
growing stronger, at last penetrated the forest.
The morning was not far advanced when a young man paused suddenly in a
glen where the trees had felt the fury of a hurricane, and looked into
the face of a person whose clothes were damp with still glistening dew.
The cold white face was upturned to the blue sky, and in the eyes was
the ghastly stare of the dead. Beside the body lay a dark-stocked rifle
clutched tightly by a rigid right hand. Under the left ear was a mass of
clotted blood, which proclaimed the gateway of the bullet of death.
"John Darknight!" exclaimed Harvey Catlett, stooping down to examine the
dead. "Little did I think that your trail would end so suddenly, and so
fatally to you. Now a new mystery begins. Where is the girl?"
An examination of the glen told the trailer that several persons besides
the unfortunate guide had been there, and he was examining a track so
peculiar as to attract attention, when a noise greeted his ears.
Raising his head and looking over his shoulder, he saw standing not far
away the person of all others whom he would meet at that hour--Little
Moccasin.
There was a smile on her face as she came forward and submitted to the
kiss which he imprinted on her cheek.
"They have been talking hard of you, girl, in the camp over the river,"
Harvey said. "They accuse you of deserting them."
"Areotha go to follow him!" she said, and her glance wandered to the
dead man in the dewy grass. "But he eluded her, and for a long time she
saw him not."
"And too late you have found him. He is there."
"Areotha saw him fall with his face to the stars. He lay so still, and
never groaned in his throat."
The young scout looked into the fair face, flushed with triumph.
"Did you do it, girl?"
"Areotha shot him when he was taking the white girl through the forest."
Harvey Catlett started.
"Then you rescued Kate!" he cried.
The girl shook her head.
"White girl taken from Areotha," was her answer. "Will Fair Face
listen?"
"I will."
In simple language Little Moccasin detailed her trailing of John
Darknight and his captive through the forest, and how in the
hurricane-swept glen she had put an end to his crimes with a bullet.
Then, of course, followed the account of James Girty's interference, and
his subsequent flight with the settler's daughter.
The scout listened without interrupting her.
"The new trail begins here," he said, addressing the beautiful creature.
"There is a ball in my rifle that may rid the Northwest Territory of its
incarnate curse."
"No, no!" cried Little Moccasin, and her hand fell on his arm. "If Fair
Face kills the Whirlwind, he will never tell."
Catlett looked into the forest beauty's eyes as a puzzled expression
settled upon his face.
"Never--never tell!" repeated the girl, mystifying him the more.
"Never tell what, Moccasin?" exclaimed the scout, as he put his arm
about her and drew her near him.
"He knows Areotha's true father."
"No!"
"He said so last night in his own cabin door, and when he said he would
not tell, Areotha raised her rifle; but he told her to shoot, and never,
never know, and--she let the rifle fall. My father knows, for when the
wound-fever was upon him he said strange things, and made me go away
when I came near."
Catlett was silent, busy with his thoughts, and when he started he saw
Areotha's eyes fixed upon him.
"The brute may know," he said. "I wish I could wrest the secret from
him."
"Fair Face will not kill him, then?" said the girl, pleading for the
life of the scourge of the settlements. "When the right time comes he
will tell."
"That time, in his opinion, will never come. When Jim Girty hates, he
hates forever."
"But will Fair Face spare him?"
"I would not spare the wolf that has trailed me for years, nor would I
be lenient with the hound that has spilled the blood of women and their
little ones. Wolf and hound is this very man whom you have called father
these many years."
"He is very bad!" the girl said, dropping her eyes. "_But he knows!_"
"Then for your sake I will not slay him, save in self defense. Otherwise
on sight would I shoot the human blood-hound."
Before Harvey Catlett had ceased to speak a pair of arms encircled his
neck, and he felt hot kisses on his face.
Areotha had conquered him.
"We part here," he said, gently releasing himself.
"Does Fair Face go to trail the Whirlwind?"
"I go to wrench Kate Merriweather from his grasp. This is my sole
mission; then back to Mad Anthony, to fight in the battle near at hand."
"And Areotha?"
"Go to the camp over the river, and tell Wolf Cap what I have done."
A pallor of fear and distrust came over the girl's face.
"He hates Areotha, and the young men do not like her."
"Do not fear the tall hunter now," Harvey said.
"Does he like Areotha?" she cried, brightening up. "She often dreams
about him, but a shadow comes between us, and in his place is the
Whirlwind and his home."
"You need not fear him, though he may act strangely sometimes. He will
protect you from the two young men of the party. You may be of
assistance to the fugitives. Stay with them until I come. Go, little
one. God bless you."
They parted in the glen, and Harvey Catlett did not stir until the wood
witch had vanished from his sight.
"I believe it stronger than ever, now," he said. "I hope it may be so.
Jim Girty, I have virtually sworn to spare your life--for on this trail
we are bound to meet--and there is but one woman in the world who could
have made me promise."
A moment later the storm swept glen was not tenanted save by the man who
would never, never leave it.
Harvey Catlett, with tightened belt and ready rifle, had stepped upon a
new trail, destined to be fraught with strange adventures.