Again that dark face peered into the room a moment and then vanished as it had done before.
But so engrossed were they with each other—their minds so filled with their new-found happiness—that they had no time to think of any thing else.
“How hard I shall try to be worthy of your priceless love, and to make your life happy!” said the young hunter, as she released herself from his embrace. As she stood up, her eyes were turned toward the window.
The face was flattened against the glass again!
“Merciful Heaven!” she cried, “there is Ku-nan-gu-no-nah! Oh, Clancy, save me!”
CHAPTER XIV.
VINNIE A PRISONER.
Darke had been gone but a little while from the cabin, before he was startled by the report of fire-arms, and the shrill war-whoop of the band of Indians who, under the leadership of the wily Ku-nan-gu-no-nah, had been sent out to capture Vinnie and bring her to the relief of the suffering Forest Rose, who, although they knew it not, was dead, having dropped quietly and peacefully away soon after they left the encampment.
These sounds came from the direction of the cabin, and by a kind of intuitive perception, he knew in an instant what was taking place there.
He had just discharged his rifle at a fine turkey that the blood-hound had come upon in a dense thicket; and reloading it as he ran, he dashed with his utmost speed through the tangled undergrowth and over fallen trees and heaps of half-decayed brushwood back toward the scene of the conflict, which still continued, as the sharp, oft-repeated reports of guns and the appalling screeches of the Indians attested.
The terrible suspense and agony of mind that he suffered in the few minutes that passed before he reached the edge of the clearing, it would be impossible to depict. He knew that the young hunter was as brave as a lion, and would not give up while life lasted; but he judged from the steady and rapid fire kept up by the savages that the odds against him were fearful.