“Yes,” he fairly groaned. “Dick is doomed to die. They are leading him into the forest. They intend to hang him—hang him! A rope is already around his neck. There is no mercy in their hearts. Border justice knows no mercy.”
As he spoke, he kept the spy-glass leveled upon the party of settlers, who, filing out of the stockade, moved down to the river bank. Here they embarked in a number of canoes for the opposite shore, and not until they had landed and plunged into the leafy depths of the forest did the ranger lower his glass.
The pupils of his dark eyes were expanded with long gazing. His brow knitted, and a shade of sadness and regret passed over his face.
He spoke to his animal and it bounded away. Just then there was a quick rustling in the tall grass before him, and a powerful Indian warrior—a giant in stature—leaped forward, and seizing the reins, jerked the pony back almost upon its haunches.
Quick of movement, and apparently conscious of the danger that threatened his young rider, the pony regained its footing, and rearing upward upon its hind feet until Rollo nearly fell from the saddle, the sagacious beast struck the savage upon the head with both of its iron-shod hoofs with such force that the giant was brought to the earth, his tufted skull completely crushed.
This sudden uprising, and equally sudden downfall, of the red assailant, occurred so quick that it was all over before the young ranger could really define the true condition of affairs. But he soon found that the dead warrior was not alone. Two others, one on each side of him, both equally as demon-like in appearance as the dead giant, arose from the tall grass and bounded toward him.
The hand of the ranger dropped to his saber. There was a lightning-like flash of the polished blade as it leaped from the scabbard into the sunlight. Then there was a flash upon the right, and a flash upon the left, and the bold ranger dashed away. But, there was blood upon his saber, for both strokes had done their fearful work, and three savage warriors lay dead upon the plain!
The young ranger dashed on over the plain as calmly as though nothing had happened. Finally, however, he drew rein again, and swept the prairie with his glass. But not a living object was visible anywhere upon the face of the great, green expanse.
Even the settlement was hidden from his view by an intervening wave of the prairie sea, and he seemed alone upon the trackless waste. However, he took the coiled horn from the pommel of the saddle and blew a blast upon it so shrill and harsh that it caused his animal to shake his head.
The young man bent his head in the attitude of listening when he removed the horn from his lips, and faintly to his ears came the sound resembling the far-off echo of his own horn.