He had hardly spoken when Sandy let out a yell of delight.
"It is Simon Kenton! That is he waving his cap to us. Now hold your own, Bob, and do not think of leaving this game. They will see fair play on both sides. And I say again, if the deer belongs to these men I would not claim it for worlds. Huzza! what great luck we are having!"
Bob, too, was thrilled by the sight of Kenton, with several other men in buckskin, advancing through the forest, and closing in on the scene of the dispute.
The trio of French trappers, unwilling to risk the chances of flight, immediately assumed a different aspect. Smiling affably, they waited to greet the newcomers, as though now perfectly willing to submit the question to arbitration.
Simon Kenton, tall and lithe as a sycamore, hastened to shake hands with each of the Armstrong boys. They had been favorites of the young woodranger ever since the first day he met them, when, with Daniel Boone, he had joined the pack-horse caravan headed for the banks of the Ohio.
"What's going on here?" he asked in his musical voice, as his keen eyes took in the belligerent attitude of the two lads, and the fact that they were confronted by a trio of French trappers; for the other two had now come out from their places of hiding.
"Oh! only a dispute as to who shot the buck," said Sandy, as though such an event were of every day occurrence with him.
"We were over yonder, while these men came from that direction," said Bob, as he pointed one way and another. "I was just about to fire, when there came a shot. The buck bounded off. Then two more guns spoke; but the deer only leaped the harder. I pressed the trigger and the buck dropped. When we came up, these men met us, and claimed the game. We told them that the only fatal bullet had entered from the right, and offered to prove our claim, or hand the prize over to them; but they said they meant to have it anyway. We were just trying to back up our words when you happened to come up. And, Sandy, we'll let Simon Kenton decide whose bullet killed this fine buck."
Kenton looked toward the three French trappers, whom he seemed to know.
"Fairer words were never spoken, Armand Lacroix, and you know it," he said, sternly. "You would follow out the custom of your partner, Jacques Larue, with whom my young friends are already acquainted, and claim everything in sight because you are French, and they are English. But that sort of game will not go here. Bagstock, take a look at the buck, and tell me whether the bullet has gone clear through the body."