The soldiers regained their equilibrium as he disappeared, and a volley that hurtled harmlessly among the branches was sent after him.
“Free! free to hate the English, as I hate the Americans,” he murmured, as he bounded through the forest. “They have killed my Night-Hawks, and by heaven! from this hour I never spare an English life. Now for the lake shore, where I gathered the brave fellows who sleep beneath British guns. There I’ll find others as brave, perhaps, as they, and we’ll hunt O’Neill’s detachment down like the Indian hunts the slayers of his wigwam pets. O’Neill—I’ve settled him! Forever I’ve canceled accounts with that liveried dog. But the girl Huldah Armstrong? Shall I give her up, now that I am free?”
He paused suddenly and seemed inclined to retrace his steps.
He was running in a north-easterly direction, his objective point the lake, and he knew—he had gleaned from O’Neill’s words—that Spangano had fled with the settler’s daughter in an opposite direction.
The outlaw was tempted to go back, and hunt for the prize that had been his.
He had run a great distance, and daylight was chasing night from the forest of the Huron.
It was extremely hazardous for him to go back now. The British troops were between him and the missing girl, and no doubt they would trail him to the death for the murder of their colonel. Perhaps, while he stood undecided how to act, they were on his track.
“I can return with my new men,” he said, suddenly, “and then I can snatch Huldah from my enemies. It’s getting too light for me to go back. I’ll not risk my life for a girl, now.”
He started forward again as he spoke the last word, but his rapid gait had dwindled into the well-known dog-trot of the Indian, and his whiter associate, the renegade.
His eagle eye took in every thing as he pushed forward, and all at once it flashed with a new light, and he halted and sprung behind a tree.