CHAPTER X.

A BAFFLED VENGEANCE.

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.