No sound or outcry betrayed the result; but, clubbing his rifle, the father bounded forward, over the trees, to the spot where the Indian was crouching. There he saw him in his death-struggle upon the ground the bell still held fast in his hand. In that critical moment, Harvey Richter could not forbear glancing at it. Its top was indented, and sprinkled with white by the glancing passage of the lead. The blood, oozing down the face of the savage, plainly showed how unerringly true had been the aim.
Something in the upward look of the dying man startled the missionary.
"Harvey Richter—don't you know me?" he gasped.
"I know you as a man who has sought to do me a wrong that only a fiend could have perpetrated. Great Heaven! Can it be? Is this you, Brazey Davis?"
"Yes; but you've finished me, so there isn't much left."
"Are you the man, Brazey, who has haunted me ever since we came in this country? Are you the person who carried away poor, dear Cora?"
"Yes—yes!" answered the man, with fainting weariness.
Such, indeed, was the case. The strange hunter and the Indian known as Mahogany were one and the same person.