But the next moment a piercing cry welled from his throat, and starting back he slipped from the carcass to find himself hanging in mid-air, caught in the strongest of man-traps. His touch had quickened the hanging hand into life, and before he could withdraw his fingers he was in the power of the ghastly trap.
The fingers are getting cold. Is Tanglefoot really dead?
“I will end this!” he cried. “If I cannot pull my dead foe down, I will climb up to him. Who ever was caught by a dead man before?”
He swung himself against the tree, then he caught a limb with his only free hand and drew his body over it. But the other wrist was still griped by the deadly fingers!
The bloated but white face of Timon Moss was turned to the little trapper. His revolver was still stuck in his belt, and it was soon in Gopher Gid's hands. He leaned over the hand that grasped his wrist, and thrust the muzzle of the revolver against the lifeless pulse and touched the trigger. There came a flash, a dull report, and the boy jerked his hand loose!
“Goodbye, Tanglefoot, forever,” he said, as he leaped to the ground. “Now I'll see the hill again. They are over there in the camp. And Midnight Jack's sister is yonder—that girl for whom Gopher Gid would risk his life if he has never seen her!”
A moment later the boy was gliding from the scene of his exciting adventures; but he ceased abruptly, for not twenty feet away an Indian was drinking from a spring that bubbled from the ground. Gopher Gid cocked the revolver in his hand, to see the savage leap to his feet and seize a repeating rifle.
“Setting Sun!” ejaculated the little trapper, and then he touched the trigger, but the hammer fell with a sharp click upon the empty cartridge.
“I'll try again,” said Gopher—and then came the clear, ringing report of a rifle, which awoke the echoes of the romantic little valley.
Setting Sun's rifle was dashed from his grasp, and the chief sprung back with a tigerish cry of rage. In his right hand he held a knife, whose long blade glittered in the light of the moon.