“He’s making for the creek,” whispered Somerville. “If an Indian, we’ll finish him.”
“It’s a pale-face,” said Bell. “Listen again, Bob. Does he run like an Injun?”
The young man did not reply, and presently the new-comer crossed an open spot in which the trio caught a glimpse of his figure. He was a tall man, clad in the garb of the English fur trader, and bore a long rifle at his side. His haggard face told of a terror-stricken heart; and it was not difficult for the trio to tell that he was flying from the blood-dyed tomahawk of Pontiac’s avengers.
He paused on the bank of the stream, and resting his sharply defined chin upon his shoulder, listened for the footsteps of his pursuers.
The three hunters could almost have touched him with their gun-barrels.
They watched him narrowly, and when he seemed about to plunge into the stream, and break his trail by water, Doc Bell spoke:
“Williamson?”
The hunted man started, and a low cry of despair parted his ashen lips. Our friends heard the click, click of his long weapon, and his fiery, blood-shot eyes seemed to pierce their covert.
“Come on!” he hissed. “John Williamson never surrenders. For three weeks I’ve been the most wretched man on earth. Awake or asleep, I’ve been hunted by the ghost of that mighty chief whose life I purchased for a barrel of rum. I want to die, and now come on, and let me take to Hades with me a dozen red demons.”
“We don’t want your life, John Williamson, though I could take it without a guilty conscience,” said Oliver Blount, who recognized the man who had precipitated the bloody war upon the country, by compassing the death of the great conspirator, Pontiac.