oes had feared
this hunter.

Wingenund, with a majestic wave of his arm, silenced the yelling
horde of frenzied savages and stepped before the captive.

The deadly foes were once again face to face. The chieftain's lofty
figure and dark, sleek head, now bare of plumes, towered over the
other Indians, but he was not obliged to lower his gaze in order to
look straight into the hunter's eyes.

Verily this hunter merited the respect which shone in the great
chieftain's glance. Like a mountain-ash he stood, straight and
strong, his magnificent frame tapering wedge-like from his broad
shoulders. The bulging line of his thick neck, the deep chest, the
knotty contour of his bared forearm, and the full curves of his
legs--all denoted a wonderful muscular development.

The power expressed in this man's body seemed intensified in his
features. His face was white and cold, his jaw square and set; his
coal-black eyes glittered with almost a superhuman fire. And his
hair, darker than the wing of a crow, fell far below his shoulders;
matted and tangled as it was, still it hung to his waist, and had it
been combed out, must have reached his knees.

One long moment Wingenund stood facing his foe, and then over the
multitude and through the valley rolled his sonorous voice:

"Deathwind dies at dawn!"

The hunter was tied to a tree and left in view of the Indian
populace. The children ran fearfully by; the braves gazed long at
the great foe of their race; the warriors passed in gloomy silence.
The savages' tricks of torture, all their diabolical ingenuity of
inflicting pain was suppressed, awaiting the hour of sunrise when
this hated Long Knife was to die.

Only one person offered an insult to the prisoner; he was a man of
his own color. Jim Girty stopped before him, his yellowish eyes
lighted by a tigerish glare, his lips curled in a snarl, and from
between them issuing the odor of the fir traders' vile rum.

"You'll soon be feed fer the buzzards," he croaked, in his hoarse
voice. He had so often strewed the plains with human flesh for the
carrion birds that the thought had a deep fascination for him. "D'ye
hear, scalp-hunter? Feed for buzzards!" He deliberately spat in the
hunter's face. "D'ye hear?" he repeated.

There was no answer save that which glittered in the hunter's eye.
But the renegade could not read it because he did not meet that
flaming glance. Wild horses could not have dragged him to face this
man had he be