Mr. Peniman caught up his musket and strode in the direction from which the sound preceded. His wife followed him.
"Be careful," she whispered cautiously, "it might be some trap!"
As they crept forward through the long, waving grass they came upon the body of a young Indian lying on his back, stark and dead. A little farther along both stopped abruptly as the moan they had heard before reached their ears. Joshua Peniman sprang forward. Suddenly he stopped, and with a motion to his wife to keep back, stooped in the grass.
Face downward in a tangle of weeds they saw an Indian lying, one arm extended, the other doubled under his head. As the white man stooped over him a shudder ran through his body and again the low, suppressed moan came from his lips.
Mr. Peniman lifted the body in his arms and turned it over. It was that of a young Indian, tall and powerful, in full war panoply, with a handsome copper-colored face. As the white man lifted him he groaned again and the blood rushed from a wound in his side. He was quite unconscious, the eyes half-closed, the lips blue and parted, the lean, keen-featured face ashen with the pallor of approaching death.
Mrs. Peniman, who had stolen up behind her husband, uttered a pitying cry, and quickly tearing off her apron tore it into strips and kneeling by the prostrate figure began binding up the gaping wound.
"Oh," she cried with a shudder, "oh, Joshua, perhaps it was I who did that! Oh, my God, to think of hurting a fellow-creature so desperately! But he was by the door—I was afraid he would get the children——"
"There were many shots fired, Hannah," her husband assured her, "it was probably not thee that hit him. But it is a terrible thing that we seem obliged to kill our fellow-men to protect ourselves. We who do not believe in slaughter——" He stopped, then went on quickly, "We must get him up to the house—he is badly wounded—he may die—and it is our duty to save his life if we can, even though we know that he is an enemy."
Between them they bore the unconscious form of the young Indian to their own home. Ruth met them at the door, and as her eyes fell upon the burden they carried she uttered a loud scream.
"It is the Indian I shot with Mother's revolver!" she cried, backing away in terror. Then seeing the gaping wound in the side she covered her face and began to cry.