With a hasty glance into the cart to see that the wounded man was safe for the time being, both boys set off at a little run to follow Ring. Straight to the hillside and down into the valley the dog went, then for a considerable distance followed the stream therein.
Running around a clump of bushes, the dog disappeared from view. A half minute later, when Ree and John came up with him, he was standing beside a pile of stones half covered by brush. Under this little mound a woodchuck or skunk had burrowed, and there were evidences that Ring had started to dig out whatever animal was inside.
“You don’t suppose the silver box came out of that hole, do you?” John asked of Ree, his tones showing disappointment.
“No, I don’t,” was the decisive answer, as Kingdom pulled away some dead branches, and lifted up a flat stone, “but I do think that the bones—”
“Of Ichabod Nesbit are under those rocks!” cried John, excitedly finishing the sentence.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CABIN BY THE RIVER.
With anxious haste John began tearing away the brush from over the heap of stones which, he was now certain, covered all that remained of the body of Ichabod Nesbit, the outlaw, whom Black Eagle, the Indian, had killed a year before.
“You remember Black Eagle’s telling us that he placed stones on Nesbit’s body, don’t you?” he asked of Ree, who was working more quietly, but no less industriously than himself. “‘Put stones on him and Great Spirit never find him,’ he said, you know.”
Ree did remember these words of the Indian, but he was thinking of something else, and said:
“We can hunt here all day, John, and we will find the bones of Nesbit under this pile of stones and brush, I’m sure; but the other half of that letter is not here. I’ll tell you where it is, though. I’ll bet a coonskin cap the chaps we saw at the Eagle tavern have it.”