With a spring like that of the panther leaping upon his prey, the old hunter sprung upon his foe, and while one broad hand, clutching the brawny throat of the savage, stifled his cries, the other drove the broad-bladed knife deep into his bosom. A single convulsive movement of the savage’s limbs, a stifled gasp in the throat, and the soul of the Crow chief had fled to the happy hunting-grounds. Another brave of the Crow nation had fallen by the hand of the Avenger.
A strange expression was in the eyes of the old “Crow-Killer” as he knelt by the side of the dead warrior.
“A young brave,” he muttered, gazing on the features of the Crow—tinted with the gay war-paint—that a few moments before had been radiant with life, health and strength, yet now were rigid in death. “Probably this was his first expedition,” he continued, “the first time that he has decked his face with the war-paint and gone on the war-trail ag’in’ the whites; yet I don’t know that; the ‘White Vulture’ isn’t much older than this chap, an’ he has seen many a bloody fight. ’Tain’t for nothing that they call him the ‘greatest fighting-man of the Crow nation.’”
The scout took another long look at the youthful features of the dead warrior, from the wound in whose breast the blood was streaming freely.
“It seems a pity to kill the red devils arter all; yet when I think of the wrong they have done me, cuss ’em!” and the guide shut his teeth together vindictively. “When I think of my father, dead, killed by these red dogs—when I think of my little Injun wife that they stole away from me, an’ then, when I think of my two boys, my twin boys—if they had lived they’d have been about the age of this feller now—it makes me feel so bitter, that I really believe if I had the power I could wipe out the whole durned Crow nation, with as little remorse as I would feel for killin’ a wolf. One of these days, I ’spect I’ll find the truth about my wife and those twin babies. It makes me feel right bad sometimes, when I think that, maybe, the Crows didn’t kill my two boys, but have reared ’em up an’ made ’em Crow warriors, taught ’em to fight ag’in’ their father, an’, some day, I may meet an’ kill ’em or they me. I think I should know ’em though, ’cos they must look like the mother an’ something like me.” And then the old hunter was silent for a moment; then he took the body of the Indian, placed it carefully with its back against a tree, facing it toward the prairie.
“Thar,” said Abe, “if any of the red skunks on the prairie pass by they’ll think he’s on his post, all right; they won’t see that he’s done fer unless they come mighty close. Now then,” he said, picking up his rifle from where he had laid it in the thicket, “now I think I can walk right into the Crow camp without any trouble; I must be careful, though, I don’t stumble on ’em afore I know it, ’cos a fight is the last thing that I want to git into now.”
CHAPTER IX. THE CROWS IN COUNCIL.
The “Crow-Killer” now made his way again to the river-bank, struck the stream at the place where he had left it, descended under the bank and then turned up the current—his footprints being in water, of course were soon washed from sight.