Presently the huge buzzard, the leader, raised his hoary 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 space
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 passed along
the edge of the rising ground. He listened to the birds, and searched the

grass 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 savagecunning. 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 hunterhurried 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 advancedhurriedly because every moment was precious.
Not a crushed blade of grass, 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 grass; 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 know that an Indian could
tread so softly as not to break the springy grass blades, but the under side

of one of these leaves, if a man steps on it, always betrays his passage
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 passage 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 grass and moss with terrible
earnestness. Yet in spite of the anger that increased to the white heat of

passion, he became aware of some strange sensation creeping upon him. He
remembered that the Delawares had offered his life. Slowly, like a shadow,

Wetzel passed 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