“Their hearts don’t tell ’em,” muttered the renegade. “The old adage is a fable; blood is not thicker than water. Virginia, years ago I stole your eldest sister, and left her to perish in the forest. This was the first blow that I aimed at your father. Now see how strangely fate sometimes disposes of things in this world. The child that I left to die did not die, but was saved, and has grown to womanhood, and I all the time thinking her dead. Girls, can’t you guess the truth? The man that saved and reared the child was Dave Kendrick, the renegade!”
The truth flashed upon the maidens in an instant.
“Sister!” cried Virginia, warmly; but the bonds upon their wrists forbade further greeting.
“Yes, she is your sister. Kate, you are Augusta Treveling, the eldest daughter of the old General,” said Girty, and a triumphant smile was upon his face.
The smile made the two girls tremble.
“The hound that I gave to the worms never told the secret to me, but, dying, he wrote it here on this piece of bark. This was his vengeance,” and Girty laughed loudly. “It will be pleasant news to the old General, your father, when he hears that both of his daughters are living, and both are in my power.”
“Oh, man, have you no mercy?” plead Kate.
“Mercy?” cried the renegade, fiercely. “Ask it of the hungry wolf, the angry bear, or the red savage, when his knife is raised to slay! Expect mercy from all these, but expect none from the man whose skin is white but whose heart is red. Come; in Chillicothe you will meet your fate.”
A broad sheet of flame, springing from the woods to the north of the little clearing, followed by the sharp report of a dozen rifles, answered the boast of the renegade.
Of the ten savages who had followed Girty’s lead, seven lay wounded or dead upon the earth.