, 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 brutal
career 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. "No