"However, they have spared the cabin, and if they will go and stay away, I shall not trouble them," he muttered, as he lowered his piece, and wondered what the next development was to be.
All at once he heard the tinkle of the cow-bell!
It was unmistakable, and he started up, his heart fluttering with fear and hope, for he concluded right away that Katrina was driving the cow home, and the departing Indians had not got far enough away to miss hearing it.
Fortunately it was from the opposite side of the clearing, from where they disappeared, and it was approaching.
"She will soon be here," he added to himself, as he advanced to meet her; "the unsuspicious creature has no idea of the danger that threatens."
It never occurred to the Texan, in his excited condition, that he was the one who ought to be suspicious, inasmuch as the sound of the cow-bell had broken upon his ear too suddenly to have been caused by the gradual approach of a cow.
He was too desirous of meeting Katrina Duncan to observe those "points," which at another time, would have been certain to have roused his alarm.
The bell showed that the wearer was close to the edge of the wood, and from some whim which he could not explain himself, the young man stepped back into the shadow and waited for the cow to appear.
Fortunate indeed was it for him that he did so, for he had scarcely taken refuge in the shelter of the wood, when a tall, sinewy Comanche stepped into view, and in his hand he held the identical cow-bell that had struck so pleasantly upon the ear of the lover!
The latter could scarcely repress an exclamation of amazement as he witnessed this, for he had not the remotest thought of any such strategy as it signified. The Indian had been the first to discover the cow, and after killing her, the bell had been taken from her neck with the purpose of using it as a decoy in drawing the owners on to their destruction.