“Jerusalem! what’s that?” muttered Boone. His eyes wandering to the river, caught sight of a dark mass extended on the prairie, a few paces from where the savage sat. The dark object was a little in the rear of the savage, and of course was not in the range of his vision.
Boone was astonished.
“I’ll sw’ar!” he muttered, “that air heap of something wasn’t thar when I looked afore.”
Boone bent a searching gaze upon it. The eyes of the scout, trained from infancy to the life of the woods, were as keen as the eyes of a hawk, yet he could make little of the dark object that broke the level of the plain.
“It looks like a buffler-skin,” he said, after a long and careful examination, “but the Injuns wouldn’t leave a hide lying round loose like that; ’sides, I’m sure that it wasn’t thar when I looked a moment ago. ’Tain’t likely that it could have been thar and me not notice it.”
Then, to the utter astonishment of Boone, the dark object moved. Little by little it seemed to creep nearer and nearer to the savage, who sat so still in silent meditation.
The hunter rubbed his eyes; he could hardly believe that he had seen aright. But a second look convinced him that his eyes had not deceived him. The dark object that looked so much like the skin of a buffalo had moved a dozen paces or more toward the Shawnee chief.
A horrible suspicion seized upon Boone. For the first time he guessed what the dark form was, and had a suspicion regarding the silent stranger who had freed him from the bonds that bound him in the Indian lodge.
Cold drops of perspiration stood upon the bronzed brow of the old Indian-fighter.
“Jerusalem! to think that thing has had its paws on me,” he muttered. “I ain’t afeard of any human that walks the yearth, but this—well, it’s proved a good spirit to me, if it’s a bad one to the red heathen.”