the wall, throwing him nearing 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 fleetinginstant 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 brutalcareer

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, gracefulmotion, 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