“I’ll see ’em inside the fort afore I go back to my hut,” said Wolf-Cap with determination. “Royal Funk and me for it, then, for I tell you, Silver—”
The distant report of a rifle broke his sentence, and caused him to shoot an anxious look into the Wyandot’s eyes.
Three more faint reports followed the first, and Wolf-Cap was about to spring forward, when Silver Hand thrust him backward toward the rushes that grew about the mouth of the creek.
“Chief—”
“‘Sh!”
The swift tread of feet was heard, and nine dark forms darted past the couple’s concealment, and disappeared in the darkness that hid from them the flash of the distant rifles.
Without a word, and at the same moment, the trail-hunters leaped to their feet.
For a moment they listened to the dying footsteps, and Silver Hand was the first to speak.
“Wolf-Cap count ’em?” he asked.
“Yes. American bullets have spared every Night-Hawk,” grated the trapper. “We must call ’em back,” and drawing a pistol from his belt he discharged it in the air.