The huge buzzard flapped his wings and flew away, but soon returned to his gruesome feast. His followers, made bold by their leader, floated down into the glade. Their black feathers shone in the sun.
They hopped over the moss; they stretched their grizzled necks, and turned their heads sideways.
Girty was sweating blood. It trickled from his ghastly face. All the suffering and horror he had caused in all his long career was as nothing to that which then rended him. He, the renegade, the white Indian, the Deathshead of the frontier, panted and prayed for a merciful breath. He was exquisitely alive. He was human.
Presently the huge buzzard, the leader, raised his h.o.a.ry head. He saw the man nailed to the tree. The bird bent his head wisely to one side, and then lightly lifted himself into the air. He sailed round the glade, over the fighting buzzards, over the spring, and over the doomed renegade. He flew out of the glade, and in again. He swooped close to Girty. His broad wings scarcely moved as he sailed along.
Girty tried to strike the buzzard as he sailed close by, but his arm fell useless. He tried to scream, but his voice failed.
Slowly the buzzard king sailed by and returned. Every time he swooped a little nearer, and bent his long, scraggy neck.
Suddenly he swooped down, light and swift as a hawk; his wide wings fanned the air; he poised under the tree, and then fastened sharp talons in the doomed man"s breast.
Chapter XXIX.
The fleeting human instinct of Wetzel had given way to the habit of years. His merciless quest for many days had been to kill the frontier fiend. Now that it had been accomplished, he turned his vengeance into its accustomed channel, and once more became the ruthless Indian-slayer.
A fierce, tingling joy surged through him as he struck the Delaware"s trail. Wingenund had made little or no effort to conceal his tracks; he had gone northwest, straight as a crow flies, toward the Indian encampment. He had a start of sixty minutes, and it would require six hours of rapid traveling to gain the Delaware town.
"Reckon he"ll make fer home," muttered Wetzel, following the trail with all possible speed.
The hunter"s method of trailing an Indian was singular. Intuition played as great a part as sight. He seemed always to divine his victim"s intention. Once on the trail he was as hard to shake off as a bloodhound. Yet he did not, by any means, always stick to the Indian"s footsteps. With Wetzel the direction was of the greatest importance.
For half a mile he closely followed the Delaware"s plainly marked trail. Then he stopped to take a quick survey of the forest before him. He abruptly left the trail, and, breaking into a run, went through the woods as fleetly and noiselessly as a deer, running for a quarter of a mile, when he stopped to listen. All seemed well, for he lowered his head, and walked slowly along, examining the moss and leaves. Presently he came upon a little open s.p.a.ce where the soil was a sandy loam. He bent over, then rose quickly. He had come upon the Indian"s trail. Cautiously he moved forward, stopping every moment to listen. In all the close pursuits of his maturer years he had never been a victim of that most cunning of Indian tricks, an ambush. He relied solely on his ear to learn if foes were close by.
The wild creatures of the forest were his informants. As soon as he heard any change in their twittering, humming or playing--whichever way they manifested their joy or fear of life--he became as hard to see, as difficult to hear as a creeping snake.
The Delaware"s trail led to a rocky ridge and there disappeared.
Wetzel made no effort to find the chief"s footprints on the flinty ground, but halted a moment and studied the ridge, the lay of the land around, a ravine on one side, and a dark impenetrable forest on the other. He was calculating his chances of finding the Delaware"s trail far on the other side. Indian woodcraft, subtle, wonderful as it may be, is limited to each Indian"s ability. Savages, as well as other men, were born unequal. One might leave a faint trail through the forest, while another could be readily traced, and a third, more cunning and skillful than his fellows, have flown under the shady trees, for all the trail he left. But redmen followed the same methods of woodcraft from tradition, as Wetzel had learned after long years of study and experience.
And now, satisfied that he had divined the Delaware"s intention, he slipped down the bank of the ravine, and once more broke into a run.
He leaped lightly, sure-footed as a goat, from stone to stone, over fallen logs, and the brawling brook. At every turn of the ravine, at every open place, he stopped to listen.
Arriving on the other side of the ridge, he left the ravine and pa.s.sed along the edge of the rising ground. He listened to the birds, and searched the gra.s.s and leaves. He found not the slightest indication of a trail where he had expected to find one. He retraced his steps patiently, carefully, scrutinizing every inch of the ground. But it was all in vain. Wingenund had begun to show his savage cunning. In his warrior days for long years no chief could rival him. His boast had always been that, when Wingenund sought to elude his pursuers, his trail faded among the moss and the ferns.
Wetzel, calm, patient, resourceful, deliberated a moment. The Delaware had not crossed this rocky ridge. He had been cunning enough to make his pursuer think such was his intention. The hunter hurried to the eastern end of the ridge for no other reason than apparently that course was the one the savage had the least reason to take. He advanced hurriedly because every moment was precious.
Not a crushed blade of gra.s.s, a brushed leaf, an overturned pebble nor a snapped twig did he find. He saw that he was getting near to the side of the ridge where the Delaware"s trail had abruptly ended.
Ah! what was there? A twisted bit of fern, with the drops of dew brushed off. Bending beside the fern, Wetzel examined the gra.s.s; it was not crushed. A small plant with triangular leaves of dark green, lay under the fern. Breaking off one of these leaves, he exposed its lower side to the light. The fine, silvery hair of fuzz that grew upon the leaf had been crushed. Wetzel knew that an Indian could tread so softly as not to break the springy gra.s.s blades, but the under side of one of these leaves, if a man steps on it, always betrays his pa.s.sage through the woods. To keen eyes this leaf showed that it had been bruised by a soft moccasin. Wetzel had located the trail, but was still ignorant of its direction. Slowly he traced the shaken ferns and bruised leaves down over the side of the ridge, and at last, near a stone, he found a moccasin-print in the moss. It pointed east. The Delaware was traveling in exactly the opposite direction to that which he should be going. He was, moreover, exercising wonderful sagacity in hiding his trail. This, however, did not trouble Wetzel, for if it took him a long time to find the trail, certainly the Delaware had expended as much, or more, in choosing hard ground, logs or rocks on which to tread.
Wetzel soon realized that his own cunning was matched. He trusted no more to his intuitive knowledge, but stuck close to the trail, as a hungry wolf holds to the scent of his quarry.
The Delaware trail led over logs, stones and hard-baked ground, up stony ravines and over cliffs. The wily chief used all of his old skill; he walked backward over moss and sand where his footprints showed plainly; he leaped wide fissures in stony ravines, and then jumped back again; he let himself down over ledges by branches; he crossed creeks and gorges by swinging himself into trees and climbing from one to another; he waded brooks where he found hard bottom, and avoided swampy, soft ground.
With dogged persistence and tenacity of purpose Wetzel stuck to this gradually fading trail. Every additional rod he was forced to go more slowly, and take more time in order to find any sign of his enemy"s pa.s.sage through the forests. One thing struck him forcibly.
Wingenund was gradually circling to the southwest, a course that took him farther and farther from the Delaware encampment.
Slowly it dawned upon Wetzel that the chief could hardly have any reason for taking this circling course save that of pride and savage joy in misleading, in fooling the foe of the Delawares, in deliberately showing Deathwind that there was one Indian who could laugh at and loose him in the forests. To Wetzel this was bitter as gall. To be led a wild goose chase! His fierce heart boiled with fury. His dark, keen eyes sought the gra.s.s and moss with terrible earnestness. Yet in spite of the anger that increased to the white heat of pa.s.sion, he became aware of some strange sensation creeping upon him. He remembered that the Delawares had offered his life.
Slowly, like a shadow, Wetzel pa.s.sed up and down the ridges, through the brown and yellow aisles of the forest, over the babbling brooks, out upon the golden-flecked fields--always close on the trail.
At last in an open part of the forest, where a fire had once swept away the brush and smaller timber, Wetzel came upon the spot where the Delaware"s trail ended.
There in the soft, black ground was a moccasin-print. The forest was not dense; there was plenty of light; no logs, stones or trees were near, and yet over all that glade no further evidence of the Indian"s trail was visible.
It faded there as the great chief had boasted it would.
Wetzel searched the burnt ground; he crawled on his hands and knees; again and again he went over the surroundings. The fact that one moccasin-print pointed west and the other east, showed that the Delaware had turned in his tracks, was the most baffling thing that had ever crossed the hunter in all his wild wanderings.
For the first time in many years he had failed. He took his defeat hard, because he had been successful for so long he thought himself almost infallible, and because the failure lost him the opportunity to kill his great foe. In his pa.s.sion he cursed himself for being so weak as to let the prayer of a woman turn him from his life"s purpose.
With bowed head and slow, dragging steps he made his way westward.
The land was strange to him, but he knew he was going toward familiar ground. For a time he walked quietly, all the time the fierce fever in his veins slowly abating. Calm he always was, except when that unnatural l.u.s.t for Indians" blood overcame him.
On the summit of a high ridge he looked around to ascertain his bearings. He was surprised to find he had traveled in a circle. A mile or so below him arose the great oak tree which he recognized as the landmark of Beautiful Spring. He found himself standing on the hill, under the very dead tree to which he had directed Girty"s attention a few hours previous.
With the idea that he would return to the spring to scalp the dead Indians, he went directly toward the big oak tree. Once out of the forest a wide plain lay between him and the wooded knoll which marked the glade of Beautiful Spring. He crossed this stretch of verdant meadow-land, and entered the copse.
Suddenly he halted. His keen sense of the usual harmony of the forest, with its innumerable quiet sounds, had received a severe shock. He sank into the tall weeds and listened. Then he crawled a little farther. Doubt became certainty. A single note of an oriole warned him, and it needed not the quick notes of a catbird to tell him that near at hand, somewhere, was human life.
Once more Wetzel became a tiger. The hot blood leaped from his heart, firing all his veins and nerves. But calmly noiseless, certain, cold, deadly as a snake he began the familiar crawling method of stalking his game.
On, on under the briars and thickets, across the hollows full of yellow leaves, up over stony patches of ground to the fern-covered cliff overhanging the glade he glided--lithe, sinuous, a tiger in movement and in heart.
He parted the long, graceful ferns and gazed with glittering eyes down into the beautiful glade.
He saw not the shining spring nor the purple moss, nor the ghastly white bones--all that the buzzards had left of the dead--nor anything, save a solitary Indian standing erect in the glade.
There, within range of his rifle, was his great Indian foe, Wingenund.
Wetzel sank back into the ferns to still the furious exultations which almost consumed him during the moment when he marked his victim. He lay there breathing hard, gripping tightly his rifle, slowly mastering the pa.s.sion that alone of all things might render his aim futile.
For him it was the third great moment of his life, the last of three moments in which the Indian"s life had belonged to him. Once before he had seen that dark, powerful face over the sights of his rifle, and he could not shoot because his one shot must be for another.
Again had that lofty, haughty figure stood before him, calm, disdainful, arrogant, and he yielded to a woman"s prayer.
The Delaware"s life was his to take, and he swore he would have it!
He trembled in the ecstasy of his triumphant pa.s.sion; his great muscles rippled and quivered, for the moment was entirely beyond his control. Then his pa.s.sion calmed. Such power for vengeance had he that he could almost still the very beats of his heart to make sure and deadly his fatal aim. Slowly he raised himself; his eyes of cold fire glittered; slowly he raised the black rifle.
Wingenund stood erect in his old, grand pose, with folded arms, but his eyes, instead of being fixed on the distant hills, were lowered to the ground.
An Indian girl, cold as marble, lay at his feet. Her garments were wet, and clung to her slender form. Her sad face was frozen into an eternal rigidity.
By her side was a newly dug grave.
The bead on the front sight of the rifle had hardly covered the chief"s dark face when Wetzel"s eye took in these other details. He had been so absorbed in his purpose that he did not dream of the Delaware"s reason for returning to the Beautiful Spring.
Slowly Wetzel"s forefinger stiffened; slowly he lowered the black rifle.
Wingenund had returned to bury Whispering Winds.
Wetzel"s teethe clenched, an awful struggle tore his heart. Slowly the rifle rose, wavered and fell. It rose again, wavered and fell.