“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Kenton, with a puzzled air. “Thar ain’t any man along the border, that I know of, that is powerful enough for to do it. Thar warn’t any marks of a struggle, neither. The Injun had been taken by surprise, an’ settled with one blow. Why, it looks as if the devil himself had had a hand in it.”
“Nothing but one clean dig, eh?” said Boone, reflectively.
“Nothing else,” replied Kenton, “’cept some knife-cuts on the breast, as if the slayer cut his totem thar, arter finishing the brute.”
Boone gave a slight start—a start that was imitated by the dark-skinned stranger who was listening to the conversation so eagerly.
“And them marks—three knife-cuts, making a red arrow?” asked Boone.
“Right to an iota!” cried Kenton, astonished at the knowledge of the other.
“The Wolf Demon, by hookey!” exclaimed Boone, in a tone of wonder. And at the name of the dreaded foe of the Shawnee nation, the dark stranger shuddered.
“What in creation do you mean by the Wolf Demon?” asked Kenton, who had never heard the story of the mysterious scourge of the Shawnees, which was well known to Boone.
Then the old hunter told the wondering crowd the story of the Wolf Demon. Told of the incomprehensible being in the shape of a huge gray wolf, but with the face of a man, who seemed to be an avenging angel destined to hunt down to his death any solitary Shawnee brave who strayed from his brethren in the forest.
Wonder-stricken, the stout borderers listened to the tale; deeply superstitious, they accepted the legend of the Indians without question; one and all were convinced that the Wolf Demon was, as the Shawnees asserted, proof against either steel or ball, and was no human, but a denizen of another world.