“You want to avenge Cutler?”
“Aye; we’re goin’ to do that, too.”
“Then wait till daylight, and I’ll go back with you, with horses. Now, let me see to Cutler.”
He passed them without waiting for their objections. As he stepped into the cabin he met Charlie Hoyt. “Take your gun, and watch those Marietta fellows,” he said. “If one of them attempts to steal a boat, or leave the ark in any way, cover him, but don’t shoot. He’ll come down.”
He went to Cutler’s bunk, and found him raised almost to a sitting posture, gasping for breath. Examining his wound, he found him shot through the heart.
“Ain’t sufferin’ a mite,” panted Cutler, cheerily. “Just make me a dressing of slippery elm and stramonium leaves, with a leetle warm water, son. That’s what Jane allus doctored gunshot wounds with. A grand dressing it made.”
He began to cough, and Marion raised him in his arm. A bright stream of arterial blood gushed from between his lips. Hastily laying him flat, Marion tried to stop the hemorrhage with the means at his command, but it was a hopeless effort. The old pioneer, who had recovered from wounds and fevers in the wilderness, had succumbed to a stray bullet where he stood in comparative safety in the midst of his friends.
It was a pioneer’s death, merciful in comparison with Indian capture, but Marion clenched his hands as he looked down at him. Kenton and MacAfee would not have thought him wanting in loyalty. No one who had heard him coolly give the unwelcome order to man the sweeps and postpone vengeance knew what it had cost him to give it.
The shot that killed Cutler had come from some lurking Indian or white renegade; or, as Cutler himself had pointed out, might have been fired for the purpose of provoking the ark’s crew to land; a war party might have been lying in ambush. Jimmy’s warning pointed to that. Even if the miscreant had been alone and remained hidden in the recesses of the cave, it would have been impossible to capture him without losing one or more men. The current, also, was unusually rapid and the shore rocky and dangerous. It had been impossible to explain all this to the mutinous, excited men, but none of these facts were ignored by the quick-witted young captain, who held all their lives in trust for those at home, as well as the responsibility for their goods, and the ark, and now, as he looked down at John Cutler, he seemed to be saying:
“If I could avenge you—if I only could!”