A faint ruddy glow now appeared upon the sky in the south-east, growing momentarily more vivid and clear. One of the Indians pointed it out to Sloan Young, who replied with a diabolical grin:
"It is the work of Dusky Dick. He has had better fortune than we."
Then as if this sight had reminded him of it, the renegade ran to the building and stirred up the dying fire, piling on clothes, bed-ticks, furniture and every thing movable, that would burn. Then he retreated once more, uttering a fiendish yell of delight.
Soon the flames burst through the open doorway, roaring and crackling as though in high glee at thus being turned loose to work its will. A torch was applied to the straw-thatched stables, and then as the affrighted stock ran lowing or neighing around their corrals, the dusky demons shot them down, uttering wild yells of diabolical exultation.
But the half-breed and his chief glided around, striving to decipher the meaning of the many tracks that covered the ground. They were moving toward the forest, where their own party had not so defaced the ground with their trampling to and fro, when an unexpected sound startled them.
It was a cry, long and unearthly, seeming like, yet unlike a human voice. But if indeed one, then it must proceed from some person either in agonizing pain or mortal terror.
Again and again it came to their ears, with increasing distinctness, and even more startling than at first. And the dusky crowd glanced at each other in mute alarm.
They knew not what to make of it. Wherever they turned, from that point the horrible shrieks seemed to issue. If they looked, it appeared to come down from the skies.
The savages ceased their work of barbarous destruction and gathered together. They felt alarm, that was rapidly increasing, at they knew not what.
The chief was scarcely less impressed, but Sloan Young did not exhibit the same symptoms. His face was eagerly turned toward the blazing cabin, through whose roof the flames were now ascending. Then as another yell broke upon his hearing, he said: