"You are bad luck," he snarled at the girl, with the superstition of the low sort of white men, who soon equal the reds in such fancies. "It has cost two good men's lives just to have met you."
He waited a while longer, but there was no fresh alarm.
"Hark ye," said he, roughly. "I am going to put you on that horse, and we must circle round out of this accursed glade. If you try to 'part co.' I shall shoot you with my first shot. It strikes me, from the way that we have been beset, it is because of you, and hence you are worth as much money as I had concluded from your story; but thar's no calculating on what anybody says nowadays."
As he drew the riderless steed towards him, and tried to make it sidle up flank to flank, its ears were moved in affright. It sniffed some alarming taint on the air, and set up so furious a kicking that the headgear was detached, and left in the astonished bandit's grasp. Then, emitting a scream like a maimed warhorse on the battle field, it dashed into the first opening, and crashed on out of all perception.
"It smells the war paint, by all that's cruel! Injins!" muttered Cormick. "But why did I hear no whoops when they made their 'coups' on Sol and Pete?"
At the same instant, as if to warrant his reflection, a vibrating yell of triumph burst forth so clearly as to seem at their elbows—a war whoop of which Cormick had never heard the like. It was so provocatory in tone that, irresistibly, at least a hundred savage cries answered it inquiringly from all parts of the ravine traversed by the bandits.
"Why, it's a nest of them," groaned the old scoundrel, aghast, and only mechanically restraining his plunging steed.
In the lull which followed—painful by contrast with that hideous clamour—a horseman dashed into the glen and faced the paralysed scout. The clothes were of Sol Garrod; but at the cry of "Oh, Mr. Dearborn! You! Help, help!" from his saddle companion, Cormick was relieved of any doubt as to his previous surmise of a deception.
"Ah, ah," grunted he, "now I know why he never came back."
With one man, and a young white only before him, he recovered full sway of his homicidal acquirements, and his gun and that Ranald had snatched from the burial place were levelled at each other.