rbances would
escape notice. At last he gained the other side of the swamp. At the
end of the cornfield before him was the clump of laurel which he had
marked from the cliff as his objective point. The Indian corn was
now about five feet high. Wetzel passed through this field unseen.
He reached the laurel bushes, where he dropped to the ground and lay
quiet a few minutes. In the dash which he would soon make to the
forest he needed all his breath and all his fleetness. He looked to
the right to see how far the woods was from where he lay. Not more
than one hundred feet. He was safe. Once in the dark shade of those
trees, and with his foes behind him, he could defy the whole race of
Delawares. He looked to his rifle, freshened the powder in the pan,
carefully adjusted the flint, and then rose quietly to his feet.

Wetzel's keen gaze, as he swept it from left to right, took in every
detail of the camp. He was almost in the village. A tepee stood not
twenty feet from his hiding-place. He could have tossed a stone in
the midst of squaws, and braves, and chiefs. The main body of
Indians was in the center of the camp. The British were lined up
further on. Both Indians and soldiers were resting on their arms and
waiting. Suddenly Wetzel started and his heart leaped. Under a maple
tree not one hundred and fifty yards distant stood four men in
earnest consultation. One was an Indian. Wetzel recognized the
fierce, stern face, the haughty, erect figure. He knew that long,
trailing war-bonnet. It could have adorned the head of but one
chief--Wingenund, the sachem of the Delawares. A British officer,
girdled and epauletted, stood next to Wingenund. Simon Girty, the
renegade, and Miller, the traitor, completed the group.

Wetzel sank to his knees. The perspiration poured from his face. The
mighty hunter trembled, but it was from eagerness. Was not Girty,
the white savage, the bane of the poor settlers, within range of a
weapon that never failed? Was not the murderous chieftain, who had
once whipped and tortured him, who had burned Crawford alive, there
in plain sight? Wetzel revelled a moment in fiendish glee. He passed
his hands tenderly over the long barrel of his rifle. In that moment
as never before he gloried in his power--a power which enabled him
to put a bullet in the eye of a squirrel at the distance these men
were from him. But only for an instant did the hunter yield to this
feeling. He knew too well the value of time an