listened. Then he crawled a
little farther. Doubt became certainty. A single note of an oriole
warned him, and it needed not the quick notes of a catbird to tell
him that near at hand, somewhere, was human life.

Once more Wetzel became a tiger. The hot blood leaped from his
heart, firing all his veins and nerves. But calmly noiseless,
certain, cold, deadly as a snake he began the familiar crawling
method of stalking his game.

On, on under the briars and thickets, across the hollows full of
yellow leaves, up over stony patches of ground to the fern-covered
cliff overhanging the glade he glided--lithe, sinuous, a tiger in
movement and in heart.

He parted the long, graceful ferns and gazed with glittering eyes
down into the beautiful glade.

He saw not the shining spring nor the purple moss, nor the ghastly
white bones--all that the buzzards had left of the dead--nor
anything, save a solitary Indian standing erect in the glade.

There, within range of his rifle, was his great Indian foe,
Wingenund.

Wetzel sank back into the ferns to still the furious exultations
which almost consumed him during the moment when he marked his
victim. He lay there breathing hard, gripping tightly his rifle,
slowly mastering the passion that alone of all things might render
his aim futile.

For him it was the third great moment of his life, the last of three
moments in which the Indian's life had belonged to him. Once before
he had seen that dark, powerful face over the sights of his rifle,
and he could not shoot because his one shot must be for another.
Again had that lofty, haughty figure stood before him, calm,
disdainful, arrogant, and he yielded to a woman's prayer.

The Delaware's life was his to take, and he swore he would have it!
He trembled in the ecstasy of his triumphant passion; his great
muscles rippled and quivered, for the moment was entirely beyond his
control. Then his passion calmed. Such power for vengeance had he
that he could almost still the very beats of his heart to make sure
and deadly his fatal aim. Slowly he raised himself; his eyes of cold
fire glittered; slowly he raised the black rifle.

Wingenund stood erect in his old, grand pose, with folded arms, but
his eyes, instead of being fixed on the distant hills, were lowered
to the ground.

An Indian girl, cold as marble, lay at his feet. Her garments were
wet, and clung to her slender form. Her sad face was frozen into an
eternal rigidity.

By h