He shouted something back which the young Ohioans could not catch, and then they saw him drop into the saddle again and turn his horse’s head in a south-westerly direction.
“We can’t overtake him, George,” said Charley Shafer. “We must stop here.”
They curbed their mustangs with little difficulty, for the beasts were jaded, and a quick “’Ho!” brought Tecumseh to a sudden halt.
“I wonder if he’s dead,” said young Shafer, riding up to the trapper, while his comrade gazed, with gritted teeth and clenched hands, at the villain who bore from him, with terrible rapidity, the beautiful being whom his young heart had learned to love.
Frontier Shack still lay motionless on the iron-gray’s back, and the horse turned his head with a softened look as the youth put forth his hand.
Tecumseh’s neck was crimsoned with blood; but the boy raised the trapper’s head with flutterings of hope.
That head seemed a lump of lead; but as Charley lifted it high from the blood-clotted mane, the expressionless eyeballs seemed to move. He looked again, this time with an exclamation of joy!
The dark eyes moved again, and the hands released the horse’s mane.
“George! George!” cried the overjoyed boy, “he lives! he lives!”
Called from the contemplation of the dark speck oscillating against the distant horizon, George Long bounded forward.