Up went that bloody cudgel for the last desperate struggle, but it did not descend.
Something seemed to have caught it among the branches of the tree.
Astonished, Gopher Gid looked up, and the sight that greeted his eyes caused him for the nonce to forget the army of dogs that were charging down upon him to finish the contest.
What did he see?
A naked arm thrust through the foliage from above, and his cudgel griped by a great white hand!
The stick slipped from his fingers, and hung suspended from that ghostly hand.
The dogs rushed upon him.
One wolfish animal sprang upon his breast, but he seized the brute by the throat, and flung him snarling and mad among his companions.
“Back dogs!” suddenly cried the leader of the Sioux youths, in his own tongue. “White boy's club catch among the limbs. He shall have it to fight with.”
Gopher Gid did not reply. The battle with the dogs had exhausted him. There was blood on his hands, his face; and his nether garments were hanging in threads upon his limbs. The brutality of his captors had almost extinguished his life. He could but look at the boy who stood before him, and point to the stick dangling over his head, and still griped by the spectral hand.