Ahdeek ran, perhaps, as he never ran before, for the fellows on his trail were fresh, while before the attack his features and physique indicated fatigue.
However, he cleared fallen trees and clumps of briers with astonishing dexterity, and at length the swash of Superior’s waves against the pictured rocks, fell upon his ears.
“Ahdeek soon meet Nahma, if Kitchi-Manitou watches over him!” said the half-breed, between short breaths. “But he dead; he travel long from the little lake near where Pontiac makes war speeches to his braves, and he loaded with powder for Nahma and Ahdeek.”
The pursuers seemed to notice their victim’s exhaustion; once or twice he touched obstacles which, a few moments since, he could have cleared without difficulty, and, speaking encouragingly to each other, they sent up a chorus of yells which must have fallen laden with doom upon the heart of the hunted.
Nearer and nearer the pictured cliffs Ahdeek approached.
The sun had disappeared beneath the surface of Superior’s restless waves, and the forest was growing dark.
Suddenly, with a grunt indicative of a surprise which smacked of the terrible, the hunted half-breed stopped in his tracks, and threw his rifle above his head, while he griped the blade of his keen knife between his teeth.
The cause for this strange action was the presence of a new foe, and that foe indicated his position by a pair of fiery eyeballs, and low, hoarse growls of bloodthirsty vindictiveness.
Ahdeek might have avoided the danger by rushing on; but the suddenness with which he had discovered the panther—for an upward glance had revealed the wood-terror’s whereabouts—had caused him to halt. It was a perilous moment, and all at once, with a trebly fierce growl, the beast left the limb, and shot down upon Ahdeek like a descending bomb, as fierce and irresistible.
The half-breed recoiled a pace and struck. But his rifle, outreaching too far, fell upon the panther’s haunches, and a second later he was borne backward, his unprotected shoulder between the pearly teeth of the brute.