“We hunt you. You know us. Fly or die!
“The Night-Hawks.”
The trapper looked at the warning a long time, and gradually a smile of contempt wreathed his lips.
“So, Royal Funk, you and your devils are in these parts again,” he said, “and I tell you, once for all, that I am not an illegal squatter. You can’t scare Card Belt.”
Then, without more words, he ascended to the roof and joined Yellow Dick, who received him with manifestations of delight in the room below. Fearlessly he threw wide the cabin door, and spread a map of the North-west, face downward, on the floor.
Then, with a piece of charcoal, he traced these words on the parchment:
“Roy Funk, I’m going to remain on the fire-lands. You can’t frighten me. I spare not and no mercy ask. No block-house shall shelter me!”
Twice the trapper read the defiance to his dog, as though the animal was possessed of comprehension, and then he pinned it to the door with the point of a knife.
CHAPTER II.
SILVER HAND, THE WYANDOT.
The reader has heard Wolf-Cap aver that he was not an illegal squatter on the fire-lands, and while he prepares to sustain the defiance nailed to his cabin door, let us inquire into the meaning of his declaration, and thereby, if possible, add to the interest of our story.
The “fire-lands” were not, as the casual reader would suppose, a tract of country blackened and rendered barren almost by the flames. On the contrary, their broad acres, well watered by majestic rivers, teemed with plenty, and even their indolent farmer to-day finds no starvelings about his premises.