“Yes,” he said, “that’s the devil’s name. Do you know him? Have you got an account ag’in’ him?”
“Yes,” cried Darke, sitting bolt upright on the couch, while a hard, stern look settled on his face. “Yes; I believe I have. And I am going to present it for settlement the very first time I see him!”
“What do you mean?” the other asked, evincing no small degree of interest in the words and actions of Darke. “Has he ever—”
“I’ll tell you,” interrupted Darke. “Then you’ll understand how it is. We—I mean Vinnie, my motherless daughter, and myself—live alone in our little cabin. There is no one to keep us company and no one that I can leave with her when, as I am often compelled to do, I go in search of game out into the woods. Sometimes I am absent a whole day together; but I never stay away over night. Some time last summer, while Vinnie was wandering through the edge of wood that skirts our little clearing, Ku-nan-gu-no-nah saw her and conceived the idea of making her his wife. Always choosing times when I was away, he has several times come to my cabin; trying to persuade Vinnie to go with him to his wigwam and become his squaw. He has never offered her violence, but the last time, failing to induce her to do as he wished, he threatened to abduct her and bear her away to the Indian village. I have left her a pistol to be used as a protector, and she has not been brought up on the frontier without learning how to handle it. I am staying away to-day, I fear, longer than I ought to. I hope I shall be able to go home soon. How long is it since you brought me here? I begin to feel stronger, as if I could walk easily enough now. Have I been here long, did you say?”
“I lugged ye in here som’eres about the middle of the a’ternoon,” replied the other, “and it’s purty near night now. ’Lon’s comin’ back with the glims now. You’ve b’en here som’ere’s about three or four hours. D’ye b’lieve yer fit to travel now?”
“Yes,” said Darke. “I think all my strength has come back. I do not feel weak or faint; but my head aches terribly—that’s all. I must go.”
The dwarf entered at this juncture, bearing four or five pitch-pine torches, which he lighted and stuck into niches in the rocky walls of the cavern.
“I s’pose ye calkilate to shoot him?” said Leander Maybob, eagerly. “I s’pose ye’ll kill him. ’Twould only jest be in the natur’ of things fer ye to do so; but I wish ye wouldn’t. I wish ye wouldn’t harm a hair of his head. Ye see he can’t die only onc’t; and if you kill him he won’t suffer only one death. If we wipe him out, he’ll hev to die a hundred deaths in one! If ye jest load a gun in the common way and fire it off, that’s all there is of it; but if ye puts in a good many loads and rams ’em down good till ye’ve got it chuck full cl’ar to the muzzle, and then manage some way to git out of danger and gives the trigger a leetle jerk, why then ye’ll bu’st the ’tarnal thing. Ye see when we tech Ku-nan-gu-no-nah off, we calkilates to bu’st him. I wish ye’d jest let us pay it all off together—your score and our own. What d’ye say?”
“You know a man always feels better for taking his own revenge,” said Darke. “It’s more satisfactory.”
“Yes, I know ’tis,” replied the big hunter. “I know ’tis, and I wouldn’t nohow let any man take our job outen our hands; but when I tell ye our story, I b’lieve ye’ll agree as we’re the ones that ought to have the prime chance at Ku-nan-gu-no-nah. If I’ll tell it to ye, ye’ll jest give the subjick a few minutes thort, won’t ye?”
“I should like very much to hear your story,” said Darke; “and I’ll consider what you have proposed.”
It is unnecessary that we should follow Leander Maybob through the somewhat tedious length of recital, during which he made many pauses and numerous repetitions; but we will give the reader the substance of his sad story.
The giant hunter had, with his dwarf brother and his parents, considerably advanced in life, come from the East seven years before, and erected a pioneer’s cabin at a place down the river twenty or twenty-five miles from their cavern lodge. They commenced making a little clearing, and for several months all went well; although the Indians made almost daily visits to their forest home, they never molested any thing or offered any violence. The days went by and they began to fancy themselves secure from any harm from the savages. But they put too much faith in their treacherous natures. When Darke heard how a band of the dusky fiends, led by Ku-nan-gu-no-nah, attacked the old settler’s cabin one dark, stormy night in the absence of his sons—when he heard how the stout-hearted, gray-haired old man and his feeble wife had been driven out, after defending their cabin and their lives gallantly for nearly two hours, by the flames which were devouring their little log home, whose rough walls had warded off the Indians’ bullets, which had rallied harmlessly from their sides; how they had been butchered as they came out from the roaring, crackling mass—when the giant avenger told him with a moisture suffusing his eyes of the return next morning of himself and Alonphilus and the heart-sickening sight they beheld; when he heard all this, he could not wonder that these strange brothers had taken a solemn and fearful vow to avenge their parents’ death. He knew that their claim on the life of the chief was greater than his; so he said, as he arose from the couch—for he was much stronger now:
“I will promise you this. Unless I find it absolutely necessary to protect myself or mine, I will try to forego my revenge on Ku-nan-gu-no-nah and leave him to your disposal. Is this satisfactory? I believe you have a better right to kill him than I.”
“Thank ye!” said the big hunter, grasping Darke’s hand and squeezing it almost painfully in his bony fingers. “Thank ye, Mr. Darke. It seems as how I can’t thank ye enough!”
“Never mind the thanks,” said Darke. “I am your debtor. You took me in when—”
“There! that’ll do,” interrupted Leander. “Come.”
As he ceased speaking, he turned and led the way into the inner apartment of the cavern.
Darke felt quite well now, with the exception of an acute pain in his head, and he followed his strange entertainer with no difficulty whatever.
The place where he now found himself resembled the outer cavern a good deal, only it was much smaller and contained a sort of rude fireplace, on the hearth of which a bright fire was blazing merrily, sending showers of sparks up a narrow fissure that served as an outlet for the smoke; in short, it was a natural chimney, and could not have answered its purpose better had it been built up of stone and mortar in the usual way. Another small apartment was curtained off from this in the same manner that the two larger apartments of the cavern were separated from each other, only the curtain of pelts was closely drawn, as if special pains had been taken to shut out the interior from the view of any one in the other part of the cave.
The big hunter motioned Darke to a seat on the stool near the fire, and then, followed by the dwarf, passed into this smaller room, if such it might be called, carefully closing the curtain behind him. Soon Darke heard him say something in a subdued tone that he could not understand. A moment later he caught a few words that caused him to wonder greatly. Evidently there was a mystery connected with the little apartment. He heard the rough voice of the big hunter say:
“Does he show any signs of life yet? Can’t be he’s dead!”
The next moment they returned, but the giant offered no explanation of the mystery, whatever it was, and Darke thought best to act as though he had not overheard the strange words quoted above. A large oaken chest stood nearly in the center of the place; and on its lid Alonphilus had arranged a savory supper of broiled venison.
The brothers each drew a stool up by the side of this strange table, and Leander invited Darke cordially to do the same.
After he had partaken of the food so hospitably proffered by his new-found friends, he announced his intention to depart at once for home. The big hunter told him that it was already growing dark outside, and he knew that he must have been away from Vinnie at least five hours, now; and he feared that she would grow uneasy if he did not return soon.
He thanked the twin avengers for their kindness and was about to go, when he saw Alonphilus raise one end of the chest as if to carry it to some other part of the cavern. He stood close at hand, and he laid hold of the other handle to assist the dwarf in its removal.
They had gone but a few paces, however, when Alonphilus tripped and fell, dropping his part of the burden to the ground; and the sudden jar caused the other handle to slip from Darke’s grasp. The chest overturned, the cover flying back as it did so, and its contents rolled out at the woodman’s feet with a weird, ghastly rattle as it struck the rocky floor. Darke, strong, brave man though he was, started back with a quick, sharp cry of alarm.
White and terrible at his feet, lay a grinning, horrible skeleton of gigantic proportions!
“Our secret! Our secret!” cried the big hunter, hoarsely. “You hev diskivered our secret!”
Still crouching down by the great tree-trunk at the entrance of the cavern lodge of the Maybob twins, in whose care her father, of whom the reader recollects she came out in search, was at that very moment, though she knew it not, and had no knowledge of the cave itself, Vinnie watched, as best she might, through the blinding storm, the approach of the rider of the white horse and his mysterious burden. Death, desisting for a moment from his persistent pawing of the earth at the base of the rock that had defied the girl’s weak attempts at removal a few minutes before, came, and standing close beside her, poked his sharp nose out through the bushes that grew thick around the foot of the tree, and watched with his keen eyes the horseman, who was coming nearer every moment.
She could not see the man’s face very distinctly, for he wore a wide, slouch hat that, when he bent far forward on his horse, to prevent the sleet from beating into his eyes and mouth, almost entirely concealed it from view.
But the mysterious burden that he carried before him was plainly visible, and seemed, perhaps because of its very mystery, to have a sort of weird fascination for her.
She could not see the object, itself; it was so closely rolled in and so carefully protected from the driving storm by the heavy black wrap that entirely enveloped it from head to foot—for she had firmly determined that it was a human form. Only one question remained unsolved in her mind now.
“Was it alive or dead?”
While she yet pondered on this mystery, and with her eyes on the horseman, every thing—the white horse—its rider—the man or woman, or corpse, that he had carried before him—whatever it was that was hidden from sight so effectually within the folds of that pall—she could not believe it was any thing else—while yet she saw him coming toward the place of her concealment, all vanished from her sight as suddenly and as surely as though the earth had opened and swallowed them up.
She uttered a little cry of consternation. Then she rubbed her eyes and looked again.
But there was nothing there, where the man and the horse and that other thing had been, only the falling storm, still raging with all its fury.
What could it mean?
She asked herself this question shudderingly, while, in her fear, she clung around the neck of her great brute companion, glad in the terror that possessed her of the company which he, dumb animal though he was, could be to her.
The blood-hound had never, for an instant, removed his gaze from the place where the mysterious horseman, with his black burden, had so unaccountably disappeared a few moments before; and while Vinnie’s arms were yet around his neck he tore himself from her embrace and darted out of sight among the shrubbery that grew dense and heavy about the spot.
Vinnie called to him repeatedly, but he did not come back. She waited, then called again and again with a like result. The dog did not come; nor could she hear him beating about the undergrowth.
Had he deserted her?
She would not believe it; and she cried again, her voice almost losing itself in the roar of the storm:
“Death! Death! Death, come back! Here, Death—good old fellow! Come back!”
Again she waited and listened.
The wind and storm were all the sounds she heard.
Then it seemed to come to her all at once that she was alone. Even her brute protector had deserted her.
All alone in the tempest that was raging through the forest like a thousand furies!
“He has gone!” she quavered, hugging the tree-trunk closer, as a gust of wind wilder than any before swept through the forest, uprooting a large sycamore not far away, and blowing the covering off from her head; letting the sleet dash in its sharp, cutting way into her face. “He is gone,” she repeated with slow iteration, “and I am all alone!”
She thought of returning to the cabin; but she dared not face the storm. It was almost certain death to attempt to make her way home with the storm at its hight and while trees were falling almost constantly, and branches flying hither and thither all the time, crashing through the tree-tops and whirling in mid-air as though they had been but feathers instead of massive pieces of wood.
She dared not venture out of her shelter. So she shrunk back as far as possible and waited. Perhaps the storm would abate somewhat after a while. She hoped it would; and this was her one bit of comfort.
In an hour’s time the tempest seemed to have spent its fury. The wild roar of the wind had dwindled to a low, mournful moaning, and the sleet had ceased to fall; but the rain fell in a slow, monotonous drizzle that seemed likely to continue through the night.
The afternoon was now very far advanced, but it lacked more than an hour of nightfall.
Vinnie arose to her feet now, and walked slowly back, as nearly as she could find her way, over the trail she had come. She followed it without much difficulty for a short distance, but by and by when she lost sight of the indistinct pathway that led away from the cavern, she was obliged to be guided solely by her judgment of what direction she ought to take to reach her father’s cabin.
For nearly an hour she kept on, picking her way through the thick undergrowth, and climbing over fallen trees and heaps of the debris of the storm which was scattered through the length and breadth of the forest. It was beginning to grow dark, and the cold November rain kept falling slowly and steadily. The sky was overcast with black clouds. Vinnie felt that she made but slow progress, hasten as she might. The night, when it came, would be very dark, and she dreaded lest it might overtake her before she reached home.
With wildly beating heart she pressed on; and soon the landmarks began to grow familiar to her. She was weary and almost heartsick; but she began to feel more hopeful. Things along her way looked more and more as though she had seen them before every minute. Was she nearing the cabin? She thought so.
She had kept a sharp look-out for the clearing that her father had made around their forest-home, but she could see nothing to remind her of it.
She kept on bravely, though, never doubting one minute that she would catch a glimpse of the cabin through the trees the next.
The trees on either hand appeared familiar. She was feeling really hopeful now.
“I’ll be there in a few moments, I’m sure,” she said to herself as cheerily as she could. “That old crooked sycamore there looks like an old acquaintance! The clearing must be just ahead!”
She pressed onward quite hopefully now; and, five minutes later, she found herself—just where she had started from an hour before. There was the rock that she had tried in vain to move, and the great tree behind whose sturdy trunk she had found a partial shelter from the storm!
She staggered back, clutching at a bush for support.
“My God!” she moaned, “I am lost!”
She sunk down on the wet earth almost despairfully.
Then her old brave spirit reasserted itself.
“What a poor miserable little coward I am!” she exclaimed, almost angry with herself. “What can I do that is more likely to get me out of my trouble than to try again?”
It was growing dark very fast now and the cold rain was falling as slowly and monotonously as ever; but she would not allow herself to think of either the coming night or the drizzling rain—and she set out for home a second time quite bravely.
It was no desirable task that she had before her, and she did not look upon her weary walk as a mere pleasure trip, by any means. Still that bold, hopeful spirit that had borne her up through her adventures with the chief that afternoon was with her now; and she was far from being despondent.
“If I try, and keep trying,” she mused, as she hurried on, “I may reach home in safety by-and-by; and if I am really lost and must stay in the forest, I suppose there is very little choice in sleeping-places. So, upon the whole, I think I had better keep traveling about as long as I can. I will try and not get faint-hearted again, anyway.”
In twenty minutes it was dark as Erebus!
Still the girl pressed bravely forward through the night. She could no longer see with any certainty. Keeping any specific course was out of the question; and it was with great difficulty that she kept her feet, at times, among the fallen trees and tangled undergrowth. But she tried to keep a bold heart.
Glancing ahead, through the blackness, to a dense thicket just in advance, she saw something that made her pause in terror. It was a pair of eyes!
Vinnie stood quite still, too much frightened to stir or cry out. That pair of fixed, fiery eyes had a sort of weird fascination for her.
All at once, while she yet looked at them, she felt the blood leaving her heart, and an awful terror took possession of her whole being.
The eyes were slowly and unmistakably advancing toward her!
She tottered back a step or two with a low cry. Just then there was a loud report near at hand. An unearthly screech, half-human, rung out on the night-air. The eyes seemed to shoot up a few feet and then they disappeared.
A man came dashing through the undergrowth, and in a moment he stood beside her.
“Vinnie!”
“Oh, father!”
“Don’t be afraid, little one,” Darke said, reassuringly. “It was a panther; but it is dead now. It is a fearful night. Let us hurry home. When we get there, you must tell me how you came here.”
He took her hand in his and they hastened on through the night.
Ku-nan-gu-no-nah had not intended to push Bear-Killer over the bluff. He knew that treachery was one of his strongest characteristics, and fearful lest in some manner he should lose his revenge, or rather his chance for revenge, on his white rival, he watched him narrowly as he made ready to hurl his tomahawk in the trial of skill he had proposed to determine which of the two should put the unconscious young hunter to death; and he detected almost instantly the intention of Bear-Killer to act in accordance with this his most prominent trait of character.
He saw that the treacherous brave was poising his tomahawk to throw, not at the mark on the tree-trunk, but at the head of their victim!
All the quick, wild passion of his fierce nature was aroused in an instant.
He was not one to brook treachery.
With a cry of rage, he struck Bear-Killer a sudden powerful blow with his fist.
The doomed savage lost his balance and toppled over the precipice.
While yet his wild death yell rung out on the storm, Ku-nan-gu-no-nah threw himself flat on the ground, and craning his neck out over the bank, looked down into the foaming water below.
At first he saw nothing but the jagged rocks and the tossing flood. Then, a little down-stream, the dusky face of his victim was visible for an instant amid the eddying waters, then it sunk from sight forever.
“He will be carried over the waterfall,” said the chief. “He will lodge on the rocks below. I will send the pale-face after him, and he can take his revenge down there. He will not dispute my right to the first chance. I will take my revenge now. He can have his afterward—all he can get!”
There was no place in the red fiend’s heart, for remorse for any evil deed. He had looked upon the whole affair as a fortunate accident that had rid him of one who stood in his way—nothing more!
He arose from the ground and turned his gaze upon his hated and senseless rival.
It would be impossible to depict the fierce rage and triumph that flashed from the chief’s eyes, as he regarded his victim.
Clancy was still swaying slowly backward and forward over the whirling, roaring waters far below, that seemed to be filled with hoarse, clamorous voices, crying aloud for his life.
The motion of his body was more gentle now that the wind had died down. The lasso no longer jerked and cracked, threatening to break and let him down into the jaws of death, gaping wide below.
He hung pulseless and heavy, like a man that was dead—there was neither a tremor nor a pulsation to tell if he lived or not.
A hand placed on his heart would have felt the faintest kind of a flutter; that was all!
He was alive, but for how long?
It was impossible for Ku-nan-gu-no-nah to touch him from the bank.
He was uncertain whether he was yet alive.
But if he clove his head with his tomahawk, he would be sure that he was dead.
Was he going to wreak vengeance for a fancied wrong, on his vital, breathing rival, or on his soulless body?
He did not know. He knew that the soul would leave the body before his vengeance was accomplished! If the form swaying before him was alive now he would leave it dead.
Was he going to tomahawk a man or a corpse?
He did not know, and he did not care!
With an expression of fiendish exultation on his dark, evil face, he took a position not more than twenty feet distant from Vere, and drew his tomahawk.
Long practice had made him an adept in the use of his favorite weapon, and he poised it instantly, without any apparent care. He was sure of his aim at such close range, and in a second the tomahawk went whirling out of his hand.
But it missed its human mark by six inches, and fell with a dull splash into the water.
The wind and the swinging motion of the young hunter had baffled him!
He uttered a deep curse, and drew a small pistol from his belt.
To cock it and bring the sights to a level with his eye was but the work of a moment. He pulled the trigger. There was a click as the hammer came down—that was all.
It was not loaded!
Clancy Vere remained unharmed.
The hand of Providence was in it!
With a low cry of baffled rage, he set about loading the pistol. He had accomplished it in a minute. Would any thing baffle him now?
He cocked it, put on a cap, and took careful aim at Clancy’s head.
There was a flash and a sharp report.
He ran to the edge of the bank and examined his intended victim’s face critically; and there was nothing to indicate that the shot had been effective. Surely it had not touched his face, and there was nothing that looked like a bullet-hole in any part of the young hunter’s deer-skin clothing.
Ku-nan-gu-no-nah was almost frantic with impotent rage.
In his ungovernable passion, before, at being twice baffled, he had neglected to put a ball in the pistol!
This explained why he had, as he thought, although he had taken accurate aim, missed his mark.
Ku-nan-gu-no-nah was a great warrior in his tribe. When he went on the war-path he always returned laden with scalps and other ghastly trophies of rapine and murder. Besides this he was looked upon as the best shot among all the braves who acknowledged his authority as chief and leader.
Now he seemed to have lost his skill, and his rage and chagrin were unbounded.
With a snarl like that of a caged tiger, he threw the pistol over the bluff.
“Maybe it will go down to Bear-Killer,” he said. “It’s good enough for him! He won’t do much fine shooting now, I guess! Maybe he will have his revenge on the pale-face with it. I’m going to cut the lasso and send him down, too, now. I think Sun-Hair, the squaw magician, has saved him to-day with her devil-box, some way. I’ll cut the lasso, and see if she can keep him from falling into the water! A tomahawk won’t kill him, and a pistol is just as powerless to do him harm!” As he ceased speaking, he drew his hunting-knife and ran his finger along its edge.
The result of the examination was apparently satisfactory—the blade was sharp.
“I don’t believe she can hold him up in the air after the lasso is cut,” he muttered.
Replacing the hunting-knife in his belt, he advanced to the root of the tree, and began climbing up its trunk.
In two or three minutes he had gained the limb to which the end of the lasso was secured.
Crawling slowly along it—for it was not large, and the waters pitching and tossing underneath made his head swim just a trifle—he worked his way out to the place where the lasso was tied. How the water roared and rung in his ears!
He swung himself astride of the limb, clutching it with his left hand to make his position more secure, while with his right he disengaged his knife and dropped its keen edge on the lasso where it was passed several times around the projecting branch.
Just then a sudden gust of wind swept past, causing the tree to sway a little.
Quick as thought he placed the end of the horn handle of his knife between his teeth and with both hands clung to the branch on which he sat. It swung from side to side two or three times, and the chief reeled for a moment as if he had lost his balance, he gripped the branch with the energy of desperation, his sharp nails sinking into the rough bark, and his swarthy face turned to an ashen hue.
In a minute or two the branch became motionless and he was once more securely seated, with one hand clinging to the limb and one foot twisted in the lasso in such a manner that he could disengage it at the instant of cutting the knot.
His situation was a perilous one, but his mind was so intent on the hellish work he was braving so much to accomplish that he heeded it not.
The least motion of the tree—a sudden gust of wind—a false movement on his part—the merest trifle would bring upon him the death he had planned for the man swinging below, who, until the lasso should be severed, was more secure than he. Again he clutched the keen-edged hunting-knife, and was about to draw it across the coils of the lariat.
A strange sound arrested his attention.
It was the voice of a man.
Steadying himself in his seat, he turned his head.
He beheld a sight so startling that he almost loosened his grip on the limb. The knife slipped from his grasp and he held on with both hands.
A white man stood on the bank not ten yards distant, with a rifle leveled at his head.
He was a very tall and very massive man, of very grotesque appearance; and when the reader is told that it was Leander Maybob, the giant hunter, and no one else, a personal description is unnecessary. The muzzle of his rifle pointed steadily at the Indian’s head, and he said in a rough tone of command that the chief was afraid to disobey, and, at the same time fearful to obey:
“Come down!”
Ku-nan-gu-no-nah realized that the time occupied in the passage of a bullet from the big hunter’s unerring rifle to his brain would be very short.
He attempted to hitch backward along the limb and came near losing his hold and shooting down into the roaring water below.
He looked at the giant in a half despairful way, which he only noticed by saying:
“Come down, or I’ll shoot!”
Again he essayed to move himself backward along the limb. It was a perilous undertaking, but death stared him grimly in the face, let him look whichever way he would.
Once more. This time he swayed so far to one side that it was with the greatest difficulty that he regained his equipoise on top of the branch.
Now he turned his gaze for an instant again to the man on the bank who held his rifle in his hands—the man whose father and mother he had murdered, though he knew it not.
If he had known the terrible oath of vengeance that the giant hunter had registered against him, he would have chosen to strangle in the stream underneath rather than to fall into his hands.
He paused a moment, shuddering as he half lost his hold on the limb.
Again that stern command rung in his ears:
“Come down!”
His efforts at moving along the branch toward the body of the tree were attended with better success, now that the limb began to grow larger and his seat more secure. Still his progress was very slow. He could have moved forward easily enough, but he dared not turn around.
When he paused to take breath a moment, he heard the big hunter say in his implacable voice:
“Come! D’ye want ter be shot?”
He exerted himself to the utmost, and five minutes later slid down the trunk of the tree and stood doggedly before his captor.
“Ku-nan-gu-no-nah is a great chief, ain’t he?” the giant said, tauntingly. “He climbs trees and can’t get down ag’in without help. Ain’t ye glad I happened along ter help ye down? He is a mighty warrior! He goes with twenty or thirty of his greasy braves in the night to kill and scalp a white-haired old man and a decrepit old woman! Some time I’m goin’ ter wipe ye out, ye cowardly red divil! but not now. I’m goin’ ter let yer live a little longer, and then when I git ready to kill ye, you’ll suffer as many awful deaths as all of your victims put together! Yer can go, now. I’m done with yer for the present. Come, don’t stand there! Go!”
He drew his rifle to his face and kept it aimed at the Indian’s head till he had gone out of sight.
Hand in hand Vinnie and her father hurried on through the storm and darkness. The way was intricate and difficult to travel; but a good half-hour’s walk brought them to the edge of the clearing, and the weary girl greeted the sight of the cabin, which looked like a large square patch of blackness, through the gloom, with feelings of grateful satisfaction.
It was the work of but a few moments for Darke, while Vinnie lighted a candle, to rekindle the fire that had burned out during their absence. The girl set the light on the table, and almost exhausted with the vicissitudes of the past few hours, threw herself upon a seat. The fire was now crackling merrily on the hearth, sending showers of sparks up the wide chimney, and Darke, divesting himself of his hunting-shirt and belt, stood before its genial blaze to dry the water that adhered to his deer-skin apparel. When he took off his wide-rimmed hat and, after shaking off the rain, tossed it into a corner, Vinnie noticed for the first time that his head was bandaged about with a white cloth. The hat had concealed it before, and he had not spoken of it, or asked her any questions as they came home; his mind being filled with the mystery of the oaken chest and its horrible contents and the strange words of the giant hunter in regard to his discovery of their “secret.” He had made no reply to these words. He could make none except to regret the accident that had brought to his notice any thing that the twin avengers did not wish him to see; and thanking them again for the kindness they had extended to him, he came away.
Vinnie arose and coming over to where he was standing put her hand on his arm, saying, anxiously:
“You are hurt, papa! I knew something had happened to you, or Death would never have acted so strangely. Tell me about it, won’t you? Does it pain you much? What can I do for you?”
“Nothing, little one. It is well enough now. The pain is very slight, and it is well cared for already. I don’t think of any thing that would make it any better. But where is the dog? I don’t see him here. I know he came here after I was hurt. Did he go out with you into the forest?”
“Yes,” she replied with a smile. “Or I went with him, rather. I would not have gone if it had not been for him.”
“Tell me about it, child,” said the woodman, eagerly. Then noticing for the first time, the electric machine on the table which Vinnie had left open just as she had used it that afternoon, and the magic slippers still attached to the battery and lying on the floor near by, he went on. “Have you been taking a private shock or enjoying an electric jig all by yourself?”
“No,” she replied, coolly enough, as though it was the most trivial of incidents she was speaking of, instead of a struggle for more than life with a bloodthirsty savage. “I have not been electrizing myself; but Ku-nan-gu-no-nah called here this afternoon while you were gone and I guess I shocked him considerably. He seemed to be not a little affected by the experiments of which he was the subject. I think he entertains quite an exalted idea of my attainments as an electrician.”
“What do you mean, girl?” he asked, excitedly, placing a hand on either shoulder and looking down into her face in a curious, half-startled way. “I don’t understand you. Has that bloody-hearted devil been here to-day? Explain yourself! Tell me what you mean!”
Seating herself before the fire, while her father listened eagerly, interrupting her often with exclamations of surprise and anger, she told him the story of the afternoon’s adventures from the time of his departure from the cabin to the moment when he came to her deliverance in the forest as she recoiled in terror before the approach of that pair of lurid eyes, not omitting the mysterious disappearance of the white horse and its rider, and the limp, helpless burden that, rolled in the pall-like cloth, he carried before him across his saddle, and her subsequent unaccountable desertion by the blood-hound.
Darke was convinced from her description of the place, that she had witnessed this strange scene somewhere in the vicinity of the twin avengers’ cavern lodge; and he recalled to mind the words that he had overheard the big hunter speak in the small, closely-curtained apartment of the cave.
He seemed to hear them again, so vividly were they impressed on his mind:
“Does he show any signs of life yet? Can’t be he’s dead!”
Was there any connection between these unexplained words and the mystery of the white horse and its rider? Were they in any way identified?
Darke thought so.
He stood leaning against the rude mantelpiece over the fireplace for several minutes, his mind busy with conjectures. But no satisfactory explanation came to the relief of his mystified mind; and the mystery of the oaken chest, the secret of the Maybob twins, the strange words of the giant hunter, and the disappearing horse and man, persisted in remaining as deep a mystery as ever.
Vinnie, who was naturally anxious to learn the particulars of her father’s accident and subsequent protracted absence and fortunate though unlooked-for appearance in the forest at the very moment when he could be instrumental in saving her life, had been regarding him attentively for a while, waiting for him to speak and not wishing to break in on his musings.
“Strange!” he said, at last, looking up suddenly. “What can have become of the dog? I never knew him to behave so before! It must be that—”
He was interrupted by a slight noise at the door. He listened intently; and a moment later the blood-hound’s well-known appeal for admittance greeted his ear.
“It is Death!” said Vinnie, hastening to open the door. “He’s come back!”
The next moment he sprung into the room, shaking the water in a little shower from his dripping coat, and leaping gladly against his master, who returned his tokens of regard with a pat on the head.
“You deserve a good whipping, you ungallant fellow,” Vinnie said, half in earnest and half playfully, “for running off and leaving me to get lost in the woods!” The dog paid little heed to her rebuke, and she continued, addressing her father: “Maybe if Death could only talk, he would have a story to tell, too. Perhaps he has discovered the mystery of the disappearing horseman! But you have not told your story yet. I am very anxious to hear about your accident, and every thing else that has happened to you since you went away. You’ll tell me all about it now, won’t you?”
And she unclosed his lips with a kiss; and he began at the beginning, and related his adventures to her, leaving out only that portion which bore directly on the mysterious secret of which the big hunter had spoken. He had blundered into a partial knowledge of the private affairs of his newly-found friends and entertainers, and his rigid ideas of honor forbade him to make so questionable a return for their disinterested hospitality as the disclosure of their privacy even to Vinnie, whom he would not have hesitated to intrust with the keeping of a life-and-death secret, had it been his own.
“It has been an eventful afternoon to us both,” said Vinnie, after she had heard him through, “and as far as I am concerned, I do not know that I am very much the worse for my share of its trials. If you are not severely injured, I think we may thank our stars for having escaped as well as we have.”
“I think so too,” replied her father. “But, my child, you look upon the perils through which you have passed too lightly. It is no trivial matter. I shudder when I think of what might have been the ending of either of your adventures. I believe, of the two, the ravenous, half-famished panther and that fiend incarnate, Ku-nan-gu-no-nah, the latter was much more to be dreaded. To the ferocity and blood-thirstiness of the beast of prey, is added the treachery and vindictiveness of a devil, and the reasoning powers of the human mind; and, in his hellishness and subtlety, the chief falls but little short of Lucifer himself! Do you realize what you have escaped, Vinnie? What should I have done, little one, if I had lost you to-day? And, Vinnie, there is another who, I am sure, would find life very void and destitute of joy did he not dream that some day you might consent to share it with him. I allude to Clancy Vere. He is a true man in every sense of the word, and I know of no one to whose loving care I would rather resign you than his.”
He had no need to ask her if Clancy Vere’s suit would be successful. He could read it in her blushes.
It was growing late now, and as they were somewhat rested, Vinnie set about the preparation of the evening meal, singing in a low voice, and building rosy air-castles as she worked, while her father busied himself with cleaning and reloading his trusty rifle, of which he felt justly proud; for a truer or more unerring weapon was not to be found for many a long mile, travel which way soever one might.
After they had partaken of the supper which Vinnie’s deft hands had spread neatly upon the table in an incredibly short space of time, Darke fastened the cabin doors and windows securely for the night. As he barred the rear door he noticed that it was even darker than when they came home, and the chill rain was falling yet in a slow, persistent drizzle. The wind had died down.
The next morning the storm had ceased, but the sky was overcast, and every thing as far as the eye could reach bore witness to the fury of the tempest of the night before.
Nothing unusual transpired at the cabin during the day; and its inmates seemed very little worse for having endured the vicissitudes of the previous afternoon. Vinnie had got up in the morning completely refreshed by her night’s sleep, and the pain was entirely gone from her father’s head, leaving nothing to remind him of the injury it had sustained but a slight bruise on his temple that would go away in a day or two.
Toward the middle of the afternoon, as they were seated cosily by their fire of hickory wood, recounting little incidents of their adventures that had escaped them the night before, they were startled by a loud rap on the cabin door. Darke hastened to open it, and was no less surprised than gratified to meet Clancy Vere.
“Welcome, boy!” he exclaimed, giving the youth a handshake and a greeting smile in which there was no conventionality, and which was as heartily returned by Clancy, whose eye wandered over the old man’s shoulder in quest of Vinnie.