“Well, I’m glad of that, for I don’t like any more danger than I’ve got to scratch through,” observed Bob, and to do him justice he spoke the truth. Bob’s reputation for bravery was not particularly good among the settlers of Point Pleasant.
“Did they discover the body of the young man that you knocked over with your rifle?” asked Benton.
“No,” replied Murdock, and a slight bit of uneasiness was plainly perceptible in his tone.
“No?” said Benton, astonished.
“No,” again said Murdock, “and I am somewhat puzzled to account for it, too. The searching parties must have passed through the ravine, it is so near the settlement. I can not understand it at all. I am sure that he was dead when we left him. You examined him, Bob. Did he show any signs of life?”
“Nary sign,” replied Bob, emphatically. But Bob’s examination of the body of the man who had fallen by the bullet of Murdock’s rifle, had been but a slight one, and Bob was not likely to be a very close observer or be able to decide between life and death in a doubtful case.
“I can not understand it,” said Murdock, absently. He was indeed sorely puzzled by the strange circumstance. The thought had occurred to him that, possibly, the shot that he had aimed with such deadly intent at the heart of his rival might have failed to accomplish the death of the young stranger. Perhaps his rival still lived and might attempt to wrest from him the prize he had toiled so to gain. The thought was wormwood to him, yet he had brooded over it all the way through the forest, thought of little else from the time he left the settlement at Point Pleasant till he stood before the lonely cabin by the Kanawha. “He may have escaped death, but yet I do not see how it can possibly be. I am sure I hit him fairly, and I do not often have to fire twice at one mark.”
“Why, thar ain’t a doubt but what he’s gone under,” cried Bob.
“But I do not understand how it is that the settlers in searching for the girl did not come upon his body,” said Murdock.
“It is strange,” observed Benton.