"One, and a big fellow."
"Did he see you?"
"No."
"Did he rise to a bug?"
"No, he didn't; but then maybe he wasn't hungry" answered Joe, who could not understand what Wetzel was driving at.
"Tell me exactly what he did."
"That's just the trouble; he didn't do anything," replied Joe, thoughtfully. "He just lay low, stifflike, under a stone. He never batted an eye. But his side-fins quivered like an aspen leaf."
"Them side-fins tell us the story. Girty, an' his redskins hev took this branch," said Wetzel, positively. "The other leads to the Huron towns. Girty's got a place near the Delaware camp somewheres. I've tried to find it a good many times. He's took more'n one white lass there, an' nobody ever seen her agin."
"Fiend! To think of a white woman, maybe a girl like Nell Wells, at the mercy of those red devils!"
"Young fellar, don't go wrong. I'll allow Injuns is bad enough; but I never hearn tell of one abusin' a white woman, as mayhap you mean. Injuns marry white women sometimes; kill an' scalp 'em often, but that's all. It's men of our own color, renegades like this Girty, as do worse'n murder."