“Ay, I have failed,” returned the other gloomily. “He must have gone with the band of Indians among whose tracks I lost his footsteps.”
“Have you any idea who can have done this horrible deed?” said Pemberton.
“It was Darkeye,” said Jasper in a stern voice.
Some of the Indians who chanced to be in the hall were startled, and rose on hearing this.
“Be not alarmed, friends,” said the fur-trader. “You are the guests of Christian men. We will not punish you for the deeds of another man of your tribe.”
“How does the white man know that this was done by Darkeye?” asked a chief haughtily.
“I know it,” said Jasper angrily; “I feel sure of it; but I cannot prove it—of course. Does Arrowhead agree with me?”
“He does!” replied the Indian, “and there may be proof. Does Jasper remember the trading store and the bitten bullet?”
A gleam of intelligence shot across the countenance of the white hunter as his comrade said this. “True, Arrowhead, true.”
He turned, as he spoke, to the body of his late father-in-law, and examined the wound. The ball, after passing through the heart, had lodged in the back, just under the skin.