“Then you think her living, Doc?”
“Why, in course she’s alive,” said the hunter and Indian-fighter, confidently. “Ef them red devils had cotched her, why she’d be with ’em now; but, you see, the only live thing they found in yer house war Pontiac, an’ I’ll bet my rifle that he let out some red hound’s blood afore he yelped fur the last time. Ha! jest as I told ye; they’re goin’.”
A smile played with the giant’s face as he saw the savages lift their dead from the ground, and move toward Cahokia Creek.
“Look yonder!” suddenly exclaimed Oliver Blount, his eyes riveted upon the Yellow Chief, who, with the assistance of two Miamis, regained his feet. “I know who the Yellow Chief is now—Jules Bardue.”
“That’s jest his name!” said Bell, “an’ a devil he is, too. Yer daughter did good work to-night, Oll, but she ought to hev finished the Creole.”
“But he will die,” said Rob Somerville, the young scout. “Look at his face; death is riding over it now.”
“No, he ain’t, boy,” said the giant. “To kill Jules Bardue you must send a bullet to his brain. I’ll never forget the night, near two years ago, when I met him near the ’Wattomie town, and hacked him to pieces with my knife. I made that scar over his left eye; I cut the thumb from his left hand, an’ four times I drove my blade between the scoundrel’s ribs. I left him for dead. I piled brush over ’im, an’ ran like oiled lightnin’. But as I live! a month arterwards I saw the Yellow Chief on Lake Michigan. Somehow or other he had come to life, an’ doctored himself up in the latest style. But, boys, the next time I’ll finish ’im; thar’s no remedy, you know, fur a bullet in the brain.”
When the hunter concluded, the savages were beyond sight, and after scouring the woods to see that none remained behind, the trio approached the blasted sight of Oliver Blount’s home.
“They shall pay for this!” hissed the fur-trader, through clenched teeth, and then he stopped before a ghastly object—the body of his faithful dog.
While he bent over it, stroking the bloody hair with the air and look of a grief-stricken man, the giant and his youthful protege returned from a scout around the cottage.