“I haven’t seen a thing,” Jerome went on, “but I’ll wager that the mare is not mistaken.”
As though in emphatic confirmation of John’s words, a rifle sounded and a bullet sped through the canvas of the covered cart.
In an instant Return Kingdom’s weapon was in readiness. A streak of darker hue against the background of the trees mid which he was watching, darted like a shadow between two large oaks. Quick as lightning the boy fired.
A piercing yell followed Ree’s shot. John, no slower than his companion to see the flitting form of the Indian, dashing away among the trees, also fired just as the savage screamed. But there came no answering bullet or sound.
“I rather guess we got him—one of us,” said John, exultingly. “I never saw so slippery a heathen, though. He glides along fast as an arrow and with no more noise. Why, his feet hardly touched the ground!”
Having quickly reloaded his rifle, Ree was watching keenly in all directions; but when no sight or sound of the wary savage appeared, he replied to his friend’s remark.
“Slippery as an eel; maybe we have finished him.”
Careful search, however, failed to reveal to the boys any trace of the Indian whose body John had been quite confident they would find stretched upon the leaves not far away. As he had done before, the fellow had disappeared instantly and completely as a puff of thin smoke in a raging gale.
Considerably disturbed, the lads took their cart and horses down the hill and into the open space between the forest and the cabin, with the greatest caution. They had hoped they were quit of their mysterious foe, and his sudden reappearance, when there had been reason to believe he was far away, was more than annoying.
“At any rate we will have four good, strong walls between ourselves and the murderous scamp to-night,” said John Jerome, as they drove up the hill to the cabin. “It is funny that on our other trip we were mysteriously shot at in just this way.”