Steadily Kate pursued her course, heading direct for the Ohio; and, without a murmur at the toilsome way, cheered by the thought that a few hours would give her to the arms of both lover and father, Virginia followed.
Leaving the two girls, so strangely unlike in station and in nature, to pursue their tedious journey through the wilderness, they little thinking that the fierce renegade, Girty, had discovered their escape, and with a chosen band of Shawnees was following hard upon their track, we will return to the man whom Girty had stricken to the earth, Dave Kendrick, the renegade.
The Indians bore the wounded man to his lodge, and examined his wound.
The blow had been a fearful one, and Kendrick’s time on earth was short.
When the renegade recovered from his faint, it did not take him long to discover that he had not many minutes to live.
“The skunk has finished me,” he muttered, with a deep groan of pain. “I haven’t got many minutes more of life, but I’d give ’em all to have a single chance at him,” and then the stricken man ground his teeth together fiercely.
“My brother is hurt much?” said one of the warriors, bending over him.
“The happy hunting-grounds for me, chief, afore I’m an hour older,” replied Kendrick, with a gasp of pain. “The cursed skunk—to use his tomahawk ag’in’ my knife,” he muttered.
“Can Noc-a-tah do any thing for his brother?” said one of the Indians, a tall chief who was one of the principal men among the Shawnees.
For a few moments Kendrick was silent, apparently overcome by pain; then, with a great effort, he rallied his scattered senses.