ure
beyond the power of words to describe.

He glanced upward through the leaves continually. At the very moment the
sun reached the point indicated by Wa-on-mon, the undergrowth parted and
the chieftain himself strode forward. And as he did so the missionary
saw on his countenance an expression that he had never noted before.

CHAPTER XXIX.

SQUARING ACCOUNTS.

When Simon Kenton was left alone by the missionary, who had been the
means of bringing about this hostile meeting, he knew that a full hour
must pass before his mortal enemy, The Panther, would reach the spot.
The ranger was in need of sleep, and he did a thing which, while the
most sensible act he could perform under the circumstances, was
certainly extraordinary; he sat down on the ground, with his back
against a tree, closed his eyes in slumber, and did not open them again
until the hour had passed. He possessed that ability, which almost any
one can acquire, of awaking at any time previously fixed upon.

Day was breaking, its light steadily spreading and diffusing itself
through the surrounding forest and filling the summer sky with an
increasing glow. Kenton deliberately arose, drank from the neighboring
river, bathing his hands and face in it, and then sauntered to the spot
where he expected to meet the dusky miscreant who was equally eager to
cross weapons with him. Leaning his rifle against a tree, the ranger
took a position and attitude in which nothing could approach or pass
without being noted by him.

"The parson is the best man in the world," he mused; "there ain't
another white man that dare go visitin' 'mong the varmints like him, for
they trust him just as his own kith and kin do.

"When I seed him walk out of the wood, right by them other varmints and
straight up to The Panther, I was sartin it was all over with him, and
he was in for his last sickness sure. The Panther had just had things
slip up on him in a way that must have made him mad enough to bite off
his own head, but the parson fixed it, and The Panther and me are bound
to meet this time.

"There must be something in that thing which he preaches," continued the
ranger, musingly, "which ain't like other things. What he says hits one
so powerful hard that it makes me feel quar. It makes him love the
varmints, the black people and the white all alike; it makes him leave
his home and spend days or weeks in the wood, just as Boone done afore
he brought his family to Kentuc