The terrible Wolf Demon was dying. The tomahawk of the Shawnee had given him his death-wound. The strong limbs, once so powerful, were now made feeble by the near approach of that terrible mystery that human mind never yet has solved.
The two scouts lifted up the head of the dying man. His eyes opened slowly and, with a vacant look, he gazed around him.
“Oh, what a terrible dream!” he murmured, faintly.
The woodmen bent their heads, eagerly, to listen.
“It seems as if I have waded through a river of blood—fresh, warm blood, gushing, freely, from terrible wounds. I dreamed that I had been changed into a wolf, a beast with a human soul, and in that soul one thought only, vengeance on the Shawnee nation. In the light and in the darkness I sought that vengeance. The red braves fell around my path as the wheat falls around the reaper, yet I staid not my hand, for the cry went up for blood, rivers of it. On each victim I cut my mark, a Red Arrow, in remembrance of the wife that the red demons tore from me a year ago by the Muskingum. I was gifted with the cunning of a maniac, for at times I am mad. The wound on my head, that I received from a falling rafter on that fearful night when my wife was killed, affected my brain. In my madness I must have dreamed all these terrible things. Dreamed that I fashioned myself a wolf-skin like a wolf, and then struck down my foes. A hollow oak in the forest was my home; there I concealed my wolf-skin when my mad fit was over. Oh! it was a terrible dream.”
Boone and Kenton exchanged glances; they knew that the dream was a reality.
Then the eyes of the stricken man, glaring around him, fell upon the strange disguise that covered his person.
“What is this?” he cried, in horror; “the skin of a wolf! Then it is not a dream! No, no, I see all clearly now; the near approach of death has cleared my eyes unto the truth. In my madness I have been like an avenging angel to the Shawnee nation. I see their tall forms around me now—masculine warriors—the tomahawk cut is on their skulls, and on their breast is graven in lines of warm blood the emblem of vengeance, the Red Arrow!”
Exhausted by the outburst, his head sunk back upon the knee of Boone.
“Heaven have mercy on his soul,” said the rough old Indian-fighter, solemnly.