of Wingenund. Wetzel stuck
close to the trail all that day and an hour before dusk he heard the
sharp crack of a rifle. A moment afterward a doe came crashing
through the thicket to Wetzel's right and bounding across a little
brook she disappeared.

A tree with a bushy, leafy top had been uprooted by a storm and had
fallen across the stream at this point. Wetzel crawled among the
branches. The dog followed and lay down beside him. Before darkness
set in Wetzel saw that the clear water of the brook had been roiled;
therefore, he concluded that somewhere upstream Indians had waded
into the brook. Probably they had killed a deer and were getting
their evening meal.

Hours passed. Twilight deepened into darkness. One by one the stars
appeared; then the crescent moon rose over the wooded hill in the
west, and the hunter never moved. With his head leaning against the
log he sat quiet and patient. At midnight he whispered to the dog,
and crawling from his hiding place glided stealthily up the stream.
Far ahead from the dark depths of the forest peeped the flickering
light of a camp-fire. Wetzel consumed a half hour in approaching
within one hundred feet of this light. Then he got down on his hands
and knees and crawled behind a tree on top of the little ridge which
had obstructed a view of the camp scene.

From this vantage point Wetzel saw a clear space surrounded by pines
and hemlocks. In the center of this glade a fire burned briskly. Two
Indians lay wrapped in their blankets, sound asleep. Wetzel pressed
the dog close to the ground, laid aside his rifle, drew his
tomahawk, and lying flat on his breast commenced to work his way,
inch by inch, toward the sleeping savages. The tall ferns trembled
as the hunter wormed his way among them, but there was no sound, not
a snapping of a twig nor a rustling of a leaf. The nightwind sighed
softly through the pines; it blew the bright sparks from the burning
logs, and fanned the embers into a red glow; it swept caressingly
over the sleeping savages, but it could not warn them that another
wind, the Wind-of-Death, was near at hand.

A quarter of an hour elapsed. Nearer and nearer; slowly but surely
drew the hunter. With what wonderful patience and self-control did
this cold-blooded Nemesis approach his victims! Probably any other
Indian slayer would have fired his rifle and then rushed to combat
with a knife or a tomahawk. Not so Wetzel. He scorned to use powder.
He crept forward