God! He's nailed me fast for buzzards!" he screamed in sudden,
awful frenzy. "Nailed fast! Ah-h! Ah-h! Ah-h! Eaten alive by
buzzards! Ah-h! Ah-h! Ah-h!"

He shrieked until his voice failed, and then he gasped.

Again the buzzards swooped overhead, this time brushing the leaves.
One, a great grizzled bird, settled upon a limb of the giant oak,
and stretched its long neck. Another alighted beside him. Others
sailed round and round the dead tree top.

The leader arched his wings, and with a dive swooped into the glade.
He alighted near Deering's dead body. He was a dark, uncanny bird,
with long, scraggy, bare neck, a wreath of white, grizzled feathers,
a cruel, hooked beak, and cold eyes.

The carrion bird looked around the glade, and put a great claw on
the dead man's breast.

"Ah-h! Ah-h!" shrieked Girty. His agonized yell of terror and horror
echoed mockingly from the wooded bluff.

The huge buzzard flapped his wings and flew away, but soon returned
to his gruesome feast. His followers, made bold by their leader,
floated down into the glade. Their black feathers shone in the sun.
They hopped over the moss; they stretched their grizzled necks, and
turned their heads sideways.

Girty was sweating blood. It trickled from his ghastly face. All the
suffering and horror he had caused in all his long career was as
nothing to that which then rended him. He, the renegade, the white
Indian, the Deathshead of the frontier, panted and prayed for a
merciful breath. He was exquisitely alive. He was human.

Presently the huge buzzard, the leader, raised his hoary head. He
saw the man nailed to the tree. The bird bent his head wisely to one
side, and then lightly lifted himself into the air. He sailed round
the glade, over the fighting buzzards, over the spring, and over the
doomed renegade. He flew out of the glade, and in again. He swooped
close to Girty. His broad wings scarcely moved as he sailed along.

Girty tried to strike the buzzard as he sailed close by, but his arm
fell useless. He tried to scream, but his voice failed.

Slowly the buzzard king sailed by and returned. Every time he
swooped a little nearer, and bent his long, scraggy neck.

Suddenly he swooped down, light and swift as a hawk; his wide wings
fanned the air; he poised under the tree, and then fastened sharp
talons in the doomed man's breast.

Chapter XXIX.

The fleeting human instinct of Wetzel had given way to the habit of
years. His merc