“They’re not far off, now,” he said, lowering the instrument. “Tom, we must go. They’ll never find you alive.”
“Thank Heaven for that!”
Then he tried to rise, but in vain; he fell back again, his hands clawed the bloody earth, and he died, gasping:
“Thank Heaven for that!”
Tecumseh was already dead. Ned Kyle’s shot had finished the career of the noble horse, and Frontier Shack clipped a bunch of the iron-gray mane, ere he turned away:
“The old horse remembered his training to the last,” he said, proudly. “He knew that that slap on the shoulder meant ‘charge!’ and dash me! didn’t he go for them rascals lively?”
He brushed a tear from his eyes, as he thrust the lock of equine hair into his bosom, and a few moments later they had left the spot.
But they had scarcely cleared a hundred yards when the trapper suddenly drew rein. A human figure had dropped into a clump of bushes beside the dusky trail.
“Indians!” he ejaculated, riding slowly forward again; but a moment later he uttered a new cry.
The figure had crept from the bushes, and, with their support, was standing erect.