“Yes, here’s one!” snapped the boy, defiantly raising his rifle.
“You impudent —— but I’m not through with you yet.” Duff’s voice was low, though deeply, bitterly threatening. But he was interrupted—
“Now you march!” commanded John Jerome, and his voice was stern and sharp. “I’ll let daylight into that black heart of yours, right here, and now, if you don’t!”
Boldly, not once turning his head to see if the rifle’s muzzle still covered him, Duff strode away; but he called to his companions:
“Run, you blasted idiots! but I miss my guess if I don’t know who’s got something you’d like blasted well to get hold of!”
As the rough fellow disappeared among the trees, John still watching, an Indian, who, unobserved, had seen the killing of Black Eagle, stole away through the bushes and vanished as silently as he had come and as he had watched.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CAMP IN THE TREE-TOP.
Until Duff was out of view John held his rifle ready for immediate use. As he turned from watching the retreating figure of the wretch, his gaze fell upon the outstretched form of the dead Indian—the staring, lustreless eyes and powder-burned, blood-stained body presenting a horrid sight. Near by the brush and stones were thrown aside and the bones of Ichabod Nesbit were scattered all about.
“I see it all now,” came slowly and solemnly from the boy’s lips. “It is plain as anything ever was! It was the letter they wanted; and to think that those miserable cut-throats made poor Black Eagle come all this distance to show them where Ichabod Nesbit lay, only to shoot him down in such a manner, when they didn’t find it! What was it that Duff was saying, too? Ree will want to know every word: ‘It was the Quaker, blast him!’ that is what he said. ‘And you, you Indian dog, said nothing about him.’ Well! I wonder if Theodore Hatch wasn’t on his way here to find that letter, himself, and if Black Eagle didn’t direct him where to come. Poor Black Eagle! Ichabod Nesbit was the cause of your death at last.”
So communing with himself in thoughts and frequent murmured words, John spent a half hour so deeply buried in his reflections concerning the murder of the unfortunate Indian, the likelihood that the murderer might be brought to the rope’s end as he so richly deserved, and the mystery of the letter describing the buried treasure, that he did not realize how swiftly time was passing.