It was all ready to spring—in an instant it would dart from its perch on the limb and shoot like an arrow down upon its swaying prey; every muscle of its lithe body was contracted. One breath—and then?
There was a dull, cutting sound, as a tense-drawn bow-string was jerked straight, and a long, slender arrow came whizzing out of a copse near at hand, and, pierced to the heart, the panther rolled off of the limb and fell quivering to the ground at the very moment when its victim seemed so secure and its triumph so complete. Its powerful limbs straightened out, and the ravenous brute was dead.
In a moment a form emerged stealthily from the thicket and crept across the opening to the foot of the tree.
It was Bear-Killer!
His ugly face still bled from the effects of the kick he had received from the young hunter a couple of hours before. His purpose in returning so soon to the scene of his late discomfiture and the death of his companions, is easily surmised when the reader remembers that he was as vindictive and vengeful as a fiend.
He gave the panther a kick with the toe of his moccasin, and saw at once that it was quite dead.
“The panther would cheat the red-man out of his revenge,” he said, savagely. “It must not be so. Nothing can save him now. He must die! The revenge of Bear-Killer is near at hand. The white hunter’s time has come.”
As the Indian ceased speaking, he drew his tomahawk, and stepped back a few paces where his aim at the head of the swinging and senseless young hunter would be true and certain.
He noted the distance accurately with his practiced eye, and poised his weapon.
“How quick he will die!” he muttered. “How easy Bear-Killer will slay him!”