t long will
she be unavenged!"

His thoughts drifted to the future. He had no fear of starvation,
for Mose could catch a rabbit or woodchuck at any time. When the
strips of meat he had hidden in his coat were gone, he could start a
fire and roast more. What concerned him most was pursuit. His trail
from the cabin had been a bloody one, which would render it easily
followed. He dared not risk exertion until he had given his wound
time to heal. Then, if he did escape from Girty and the Delawares,
his future was not bright. His experiences of the last few days had
not only sobered, but brought home to him this real border life.
With all his fire and daring he new he was no fool. He had eagerly
embraced a career which, at the present stage of his training, was
beyond his scope--not that he did not know how to act in sudden
crises, but because he had not had the necessary practice to quickly
and surely use his knowledge.

Bitter, indeed, was his self-scorn when he recalled that of the
several critical positions he had been in since his acquaintance
with Wetzel, he had failed in all but one. The exception was the
killing of Silvertip. Here his fury had made him fight as Wetzel
fought with only his every day incentive. He realized that the
border was no place for any save the boldest and most experienced
hunters--men who had become inured to hardship, callous as to death,
keen as Indians. Fear was not in Joe nor lack of confidence; but he
had good sense, and realized he would have done a wiser thing had he
stayed at Fort Henry. Colonel Zane was right. The Indians were
tigers, the renegades vultures, the vast untrammeled forests and
plains their covert. Ten years of war had rendered this wilderness a
place where those few white men who had survived were hardened to
the spilling of blood, stern even in those few quiet hours which
peril allowed them, strong in their sacrifice of all for future
generations.

A low growl from Mose broke into Joe's reflections. The dog had
raised his nose from his paws and sniffed suspiciously at the air.
The lad heard a slight rustling outside, and in another moment was
overjoyed at seeing Whispering Winds. She came swiftly, with a
lithe, graceful motion, and flying to him like a rush of wind, knelt
beside him. She kissed him and murmured words of endearment.

"Winds, where have you been?" he asked her, in the mixed English and
Indian dialect in which they conversed.

She told him the dog h