“Let him lift that hatchet over them,” grated the scout. “Just let him do it, and I’ll bore his brain, if I lose my life for it the next minute!”
The Indian continued to approach the scouts with the noiseless tread of the cat.
Donald McKay could hardly believe that they slept, yet such seemed to be the fact, and he wished he could rouse them without resorting to the pistol, which might bring destruction upon the heads of all.
At length the savage paused over the spies, and then dropped upon his knees beside Kit South.
For a moment he seemed to contemplate his prey, as the panther does his before he springs from the leafy bough upon it.
How Donald McKay watched him!
Not even when he heard a voice in his rear, did he move his eyeballs.
The noise in his rear, slight as it was, told him much.
Dusky foes were gliding upon him from the gloom that slept upon the river.
He knew it, but the knowledge did not unnerve his arm. He knew, too, that the tomahawk would immediately follow his capture, for Captain Jack had offered a tempting reward for his scalp—not his person, which he did not want.