He glanced upward through the leaves continually. At the very moment the sun reached the point indicated by Wa-on-mon, the undergrowth parted and the chieftain himself strode forward. And as he did so the missionary saw on his countenance an expression that he had never noted before.
CHAPTER XXIX.
SQUARING ACCOUNTS.
When Simon Kenton was left alone by the missionary, who had been the means of bringing about this hostile meeting, he knew that a full hour must pass before his mortal enemy, The Panther, would reach the spot. The ranger was in need of sleep, and he did a thing which, while the most sensible act he could perform under the circumstances, was certainly extraordinary; he sat down on the ground, with his back against a tree, closed his eyes in slumber, and did not open them again until the hour had passed. He possessed that ability, which almost any one can acquire, of awaking at any time previously fixed upon.
Day was breaking, its light steadily spreading and diffusing itself through the surrounding forest and filling the summer sky with an increasing glow. Kenton deliberately arose, drank from the neighboring river, bathing his hands and face in it, and then sauntered to the spot where he expected to meet the dusky miscreant who was equally eager to cross weapons with him. Leaning his rifle against a tree, the ranger took a position and attitude in which nothing could approach or pass without being noted by him.
"The parson is the best man in the world," he mused; "there ain't another white man that dare go visitin' 'mong the varmints like him, for they trust him just as his own kith and kin do.
"When I seed him walk out of the wood, right by them other varmints and straight up to The Panther, I was sartin it was all over with him, and he was in for his last sickness sure. The Panther had just had things slip up on him in a way that must have made him mad enough to bite off his own head, but the parson fixed it, and The Panther and me are bound to meet this time.
"There must be something in that thing which he preaches," continued the ranger, musingly, "which ain't like other things. What he says hits one so powerful hard that it makes me feel quar. It makes him love the varmints, the black people and the white all alike; it makes him leave his home and spend days or weeks in the wood, just as Boone done afore he brought his family to Kentucky.
"What did the missionary mean by tellin' me a brave man is merciful? I wonder whether he had any talk with The Panther? It would be just like him to do so, but it was time throwed away. Howsumever, his words to me stick in my ears, and keep going back and forth as nothin' that was ever said to me afore has done.