A low but startling growl aroused her. She looked wildly around, and saw, to her horror, the form of some beast crouching upon a limb above her, ready for its spring—saw the great mouth, the long, sharp teeth, the blood-red tongue, the eyes like balls of fire—knew that a panther had trailed her—would instantly leap upon and tear her to pieces, and with a great cry of agony fell insensible to the ground.
CHAPTER IX.
I-RON-YAH-TEK-HA
"It beats human natur', Burning Cloud," said Wash Lawton, the scout, as he lay concealed in a deep crevice of the rocks, craftily covered by bushes and dirt and stones so as to resemble the natural surface of the hill, and at but a little distance from the spot where he had fallen—"it beats human natur' how yer could hev got me out of ther scrape, and it war jest the tightest I war ever in durin' all my days."
"The daughter of the red-man," replied the Indian girl, who was his companion, "has never forgotten his kindness when his pale-faced brother—but not in heart, for one is white as the snow, and the other as black and treacherous as a thunder-cloud—would have buried his tomahawk in her head, and she with one arm broken and useless."
"It was er mean, cowardly trick, that am er fact, but I hain't half as well able to pertect myself as you war. I feel jest as ef I had been run through er boom full of logs in er spring freshet, and as ef every drop of blood in my carcass had settled inter my brains."
And so indeed he looked. His eyes were still so much bloodshot that the iris could not be distinguished, while the skin of his face was swollen as if blood had been forced through every pore, despite the constant bathing with cool water by the gentle hands of his savior and nurse.
"The pale-face would soon have gone to the land of spirits," she continued, "had he not been released."
"But how did yer manage it? Sartinly yer could never have climbed down ther face of ther rocks."