All at once he heard a distant or smothered cry. He stopped at once, and as he could hear nothing further, he fancied that he must have been mistaken, or that it was the screech of a far-away mountain lion. He turned again in his tracks, and by some instinct ran back to the hidden stream which flowed along down in the deep gully. That scream again! and he was sure it was a woman's voice. He flew now in the direction from which it had come. The moon was down, and he could see nothing but shadows and gloom, accustomed as he was to piercing these mountain nights with his keen, far-sighted eyes.
Again and again that scream, and this time he saw, not many rods distant from him, a door flung open, for it threw a stream of light across the brush between him and the cabin. He ran on and on, jumping over the brush occasionally and panting harder as his bounds drew him nearer the source of those piercing screams. A man's curses and three successive shots rang out upon the air, mingled with screams, then a hideous laugh in a harsh voice that was still a woman's, and John could just see a flying figure bound out from the door and disappear in the depths of the shadows of the gully.
"You she-devil!" yelled a man, as he dashed away after the figure flying away in the darkness.
John hesitated a moment whether to follow the two who had run away, or to make straight for the cabin; he chose the latter, and with hasty bounds, he was soon at the door with his eyes fixed upon a figure stretched upon the floor.
It was Ellen! A moment, and he was beside her, trying to stanch the pistol shot wound in her gaping neck, and calling softly under his breath for her to open her eyes.
He did not hear the heavy steps behind him, but he turned to meet the black, blazing eyes of Louisiana Liz, peeping in the door behind him, her smoking pistol still in her hand, and then he heard the woman howl with wicked laughter:
"You sought your flown bird too late, for the huntsman found her heart and the keen arrow of hate found her throat almost as soon. Ha, ha, ha!"
John's blood curdled in his veins, and he held the dying girl closer to him as he bent his head over her.
Ellie opened her eyes as she felt John's presence, and whispered painfully, "Tell Aunt Clara to forgive me; I am so sorry. I am—so—sorry—"
John never knew how he allowed that sweet life to flicker out, for he felt as if he could arise and grapple with Death himself and conquer the grim destroyer of all this beauty and youth.