“I’ll tell you,” interrupted Darke. “Then you’ll understand how it is. We—I mean Vinnie, my motherless daughter, and myself—live alone in our little cabin. There is no one to keep us company and no one that I can leave with her when, as I am often compelled to do, I go in search of game out into the woods. Sometimes I am absent a whole day together; but I never stay away over night. Some time last summer, while Vinnie was wandering through the edge of wood that skirts our little clearing, Ku-nan-gu-no-nah saw her and conceived the idea of making her his wife. Always choosing times when I was away, he has several times come to my cabin; trying to persuade Vinnie to go with him to his wigwam and become his squaw. He has never offered her violence, but the last time, failing to induce her to do as he wished, he threatened to abduct her and bear her away to the Indian village. I have left her a pistol to be used as a protector, and she has not been brought up on the frontier without learning how to handle it. I am staying away to-day, I fear, longer than I ought to. I hope I shall be able to go home soon. How long is it since you brought me here? I begin to feel stronger, as if I could walk easily enough now. Have I been here long, did you say?”
“I lugged ye in here som’eres about the middle of the a’ternoon,” replied the other, “and it’s purty near night now. ’Lon’s comin’ back with the glims now. You’ve b’en here som’ere’s about three or four hours. D’ye b’lieve yer fit to travel now?”
“Yes,” said Darke. “I think all my strength has come back. I do not feel weak or faint; but my head aches terribly—that’s all. I must go.”
The dwarf entered at this juncture, bearing four or five pitch-pine torches, which he lighted and stuck into niches in the rocky walls of the cavern.
“I s’pose ye calkilate to shoot him?” said Leander Maybob, eagerly. “I s’pose ye’ll kill him. ’Twould only jest be in the natur’ of things fer ye to do so; but I wish ye wouldn’t. I wish ye wouldn’t harm a hair of his head. Ye see he can’t die only onc’t; and if you kill him he won’t suffer only one death. If we wipe him out, he’ll hev to die a hundred deaths in one! If ye jest load a gun in the common way and fire it off, that’s all there is of it; but if ye puts in a good many loads and rams ’em down good till ye’ve got it chuck full cl’ar to the muzzle, and then manage some way to git out of danger and gives the trigger a leetle jerk, why then ye’ll bu’st the ’tarnal thing. Ye see when we tech Ku-nan-gu-no-nah off, we calkilates to bu’st him. I wish ye’d jest let us pay it all off together—your score and our own. What d’ye say?”
“You know a man always feels better for taking his own revenge,” said Darke. “It’s more satisfactory.”
“Yes, I know ’tis,” replied the big hunter. “I know ’tis, and I wouldn’t nohow let any man take our job outen our hands; but when I tell ye our story, I b’lieve ye’ll agree as we’re the ones that ought to have the prime chance at Ku-nan-gu-no-nah. If I’ll tell it to ye, ye’ll jest give the subjick a few minutes thort, won’t ye?”
“I should like very much to hear your story,” said Darke; “and I’ll consider what you have proposed.”
It is unnecessary that we should follow Leander Maybob through the somewhat tedious length of recital, during which he made many pauses and numerous repetitions; but we will give the reader the substance of his sad story.
The giant hunter had, with his dwarf brother and his parents, considerably advanced in life, come from the East seven years before, and erected a pioneer’s cabin at a place down the river twenty or twenty-five miles from their cavern lodge. They commenced making a little clearing, and for several months all went well; although the Indians made almost daily visits to their forest home, they never molested any thing or offered any violence. The days went by and they began to fancy themselves secure from any harm from the savages. But they put too much faith in their treacherous natures. When Darke heard how a band of the dusky fiends, led by Ku-nan-gu-no-nah, attacked the old settler’s cabin one dark, stormy night in the absence of his sons—when he heard how the stout-hearted, gray-haired old man and his feeble wife had been driven out, after defending their cabin and their lives gallantly for nearly two hours, by the flames which were devouring their little log home, whose rough walls had warded off the Indians’ bullets, which had rallied harmlessly from their sides; how they had been butchered as they came out from the roaring, crackling mass—when the giant avenger told him with a moisture suffusing his eyes of the return next morning of himself and Alonphilus and the heart-sickening sight they beheld; when he heard all this, he could not wonder that these strange brothers had taken a solemn and fearful vow to avenge their parents’ death. He knew that their claim on the life of the chief was greater than his; so he said, as he arose from the couch—for he was much stronger now: