Mabel Ashbridge laid her head on the lap of her mother, who like Mrs. Altman, sat with her back against the splintered ash, and with little appreciation of the fearful shadow that rested upon all, soon sank into unconsciousness. The mothers were so nervous and unstrung that though they occasionally shut their eyes, the slumber was fitful and brief.
But among all the party there was none more alert than Agnes Altman. She had not yet quite forgiven herself for her weakness in showing mercy to the imprisoned Panther the night before, when he came within a hair of slaying her beloved George Ashbridge, and, without hinting her intention to any one, she determined that, with the help of heaven, she would do something to erase that criminal imprudence, as she viewed it, on her part.
It may have been this resolution, supplemented by her own consummate faculties of sight and vision, or, more properly, it was both, that brought to her a knowledge of peril before it was suspected by any one of the rangers, or even by George Ashbridge, who, as may be said, was at her elbow.
Agnes was seated on the leaves, the same as her mother, and with her back resting against a boulder, which rose a few inches above her head. In this posture she closed her eyes. They could be of no use to her, and by shutting them she was able to concentrate her faculties into the single one of listening; upon that alone she now placed her dependence.
And seated thus, and listening with absorbing intensity, she speedily became aware of a startling fact; some one was directly on the other side of the boulder, and separated by no more than three feet from her.
That that some one was a Shawanoe Indian was as certain as that her name was Agnes Altman.
CHAPTER XII.
CARRYING THE WAR INTO AFRICA.
Jethro Juggens, the brawny servant of Mr. Altman, the dusky youth with the strength of a Hercules, the intellect of a child, or a skill in the use of the rifle hardly second to that of Kenton and Boone, has a singular but momentous part to play in the incidents that follow. The reader must, therefore, bear with us when now and then we turn aside from the graver and more tragical sweep of incidents to follow the doings and the fortunes and misfortunes of the one who rendered such signal service to his friends, already related in "Shod with Silence."