CHAPTER XIV.

VINNIE A PRISONER.

Darke had been gone but a little while from the cabin, before he was startled by the report of fire-arms, and the shrill war-whoop of the band of Indians who, under the leadership of the wily Ku-nan-gu-no-nah, had been sent out to capture Vinnie and bring her to the relief of the suffering Forest Rose, who, although they knew it not, was dead, having dropped quietly and peacefully away soon after they left the encampment.

These sounds came from the direction of the cabin, and by a kind of intuitive perception, he knew in an instant what was taking place there.

He had just discharged his rifle at a fine turkey that the blood-hound had come upon in a dense thicket; and reloading it as he ran, he dashed with his utmost speed through the tangled undergrowth and over fallen trees and heaps of half-decayed brushwood back toward the scene of the conflict, which still continued, as the sharp, oft-repeated reports of guns and the appalling screeches of the Indians attested.

The terrible suspense and agony of mind that he suffered in the few minutes that passed before he reached the edge of the clearing, it would be impossible to depict. He knew that the young hunter was as brave as a lion, and would not give up while life lasted; but he judged from the steady and rapid fire kept up by the savages that the odds against him were fearful.

“My God!” he gasped, as he bounded forward, holding his long rifle ready for use at an instant’s warning, “the bloody fiends will butcher them both! If I could only be there to help them!”

Suddenly, as he ceased speaking, the firing, which for two or three minutes past had been almost incessant, stopped. There was a moment of awful silence to the listening woodman, then there came a loud crash.

Darke knew what this was.

“Heavens!” he cried, “the devils have forced the door! Nothing can save them now! Their doom is sealed! Oh, Vinnie! Vinnie!”

His agony was terrible.

He had reached the boundary of the clearing. It was rapidly growing dark now, and he had little fear of discovery. He paused a moment to reconnoiter. Only two Indians were visible outside the cabin. He raised his rifle to his face; his aim was quick and sure; and an instant later one of the savages threw up his arms, and with an ear-splitting screech of agony, fell on his face, dead.

Almost simultaneously with the report of the woodman’s trusty weapon, another rung out inside the cabin.

“It is Vinnie’s revolver!” muttered Darke as he stepped quickly out of sight behind a clump of bushes and proceeded to reload. “Thank God she yet lives!”

Peering out, he discovered that the remaining Indian had set fire to the cabin and was skulking around the other side, probably to get out of range of his unerring rifle.

It was nearly dark now, but the settler fired again, and a bullet went crashing through the savage’s brain, just as he had almost gained the coveted shelter.

Vinnie’s revolver cracked again inside the cabin as Darke rammed home another load; and he uttered another fervent “Thank God!” as he thought that she had been saved thus far. At his request, she had placed it upon her person that morning, and he had reason to think that it was being fired by her own hands. He could not distinguish the sound of Clancy’s weapon from the Indians’; but he knew him well enough to be certain that he would not yield except with his life.

The fire was creeping up the side of the cabin, gaining ground rapidly in the dry timber of which it was constructed. In a few moments the whole building would be in a light blaze. An attempt to extinguish the flames would, Darke saw, be fruitless.

There was no one to oppose his advance across the clearing since he had slain the two savages left on the outside to fire the cabin and guard against a surprise by any one from without, and closely followed by Death, he dashed over the intervening space to the open door of the cabin.

Looking within he saw, by the light of the fire blazing on the hearth, that Clancy Vere was engaged in a desperate, hand-to-hand struggle with three Indians. His back was against the wall, and with an almost superhuman effort he forced them back and kept them at bay with his clubbed rifle. Their guns were not loaded; but the young hunter detected one of the trio in the act of charging his rifle, while the two others vainly tried to get at him with their knives, and, quickly whipping out his six-shooter, one chamber of which held a leaden bullet that soon proved a quietus to this most dangerous of his assailants, he discharged it and had only two enemies to contend with.

The next moment the young hunter’s clubbed weapon fell with deadly force upon the head of one of the Indians, crushing it like an egg-shell, while at the same instant the other fell, pierced through the brain by a ball from Darke’s unerring rifle.

Clancy had fought like a tiger, and though he had not been dangerously wounded, he had not escaped unscathed. A bullet fired through the window, before the Indians had forced an entrance through the battered-down door of the cabin, had grazed his temple, making an ugly though not dangerous furrow, and carrying away a portion of his ear. The blood was trickling down his face, and dropping upon the floor at his feet.

Darke sprung into the room at a single bound.

“Vinnie!” he cried. “Where is Vinnie?”

“Gone!” gasped Clancy.

“Gone! My God! what do you mean?”

“The Indians made her a prisoner!”

“Vinnie! My Vinnie a prisoner in the hands of those devils! And you let them take her?”

“Stop!” exclaimed the young man, while an expression of keen pain swept across his face. “I could not help it! I would gladly have laid down my life to save hers! For a time we fought them side by side. There are five dead Indians here on the floor. She killed two of them. Only two of the chambers of her revolver were loaded; and after they were emptied I fought them alone, shielding her form with mine. Then I was set upon from all sides at once, and she was snatched away from me. I did all I could. She was _my_ Vinnie, too, Mr. Darke, and I will wrest her from the power of that red demon or die in the attempt! You do me injustice!”

“Pardon me, boy,” said the woodman, extending his hand, which was readily taken by Clancy. “I was mad! I did not mean what I said—please forget it if you can. If we can not get her back, I believe I shall go crazy!”

“Oh, we _can_ get her back—we _must_!” cried the young hunter. “We must get help and follow them and take her out of their hands or die!”

“How many are there in the party?” asked Darke.

“I am not certain. At the beginning I think there were about a dozen or fifteen—I do not know exactly. Five are dead.”

“There are seven dead!” replied Darke. “I shot two outside!”

“Then there must be a half-dozen, more or less, that have escaped, taking Vinnie with them.”

“They have been gone twenty minutes,” said the woodman; “and we must act at once!”

“We can not follow them to-night,” said Clancy.

“Not to-night! Why?” and Darke evinced disappointment.

“Because they are mounted. They left their horses at the edge of the forest. It is scarcely three miles away. Before we could overtake them they would be miles out on the prairie, riding at their horses’ best speed. We can do nothing alone, and horses are indispensable—we must have them.”

“Where can we get them?” Darke asked, admitting to himself the truth of Clancy’s reasoning.

“At the settlement. We can have every thing ready to-night and start before daybreak.”

“Who do you think we had better get to go with us?” asked Darke. “We must have good men.”

“I think we can do no better than to have Pete Wimple for one,” said Clancy. “A truer and braver man can not be found in the North-west.”

“True,” said the woodman. “And the big hunter for another!”

“If we could only get him!” exclaimed Clancy.

“I’m sure he will go. He hates the Indians with an undying hatred, and is glad of any opportunity to wreak his terrible vengeance on them for the cold-blooded butchery of his aged parents.”

“Yes,” said the young hunter, “he told me his story. What a fiend incarnate the chief is!”

“You mean Ku-nan-gu-no-nah. Was he with the party?”

“He led them,” said Clancy. “I think he instigated the attack to get possession of Vinnie.”

The youth shuddered as he thought what might be her fate in such hands. How he longed for the morning.

Darke remembered the promise he had made to Leander Maybob the day before, and wondered if he could restrain himself from shooting the red demon at sight.

“Do you think we will need any one else?” he asked.

“I think not. There will be four of us; and Pete Wimple and the giant hunter will be a host in themselves.”

“We must make all our preparations to-night,” said Darke, “so as to be far on our way at daylight.”

“Yes. We must— What’s that? It sounds like fire!”

A strange sound had arrested his attention.

“It _is_ fire!” replied Darke. “I saw one of the devils fire the cabin. It must be all in a light blaze before this time!”

“Then it was fired before you came in?”

“Yes. It was set at the rear, and that is the reason you have not seen or heard it till now. The flames were climbing the roof as I crossed the clearing. But we must not stay here. One of us must go to the settlement and the other to the cavern to-night. Do you think you can walk well enough to undertake to get to the settlement? Your ankles must be—”

“Yes,” and the look on his face confirmed what he said, “I could do any thing—brave any thing for her! There is nothing that I would not attempt to save her from pain—nothing that I would not dare, to make her happy! Vinnie is more to me than my life, Mr. Darke! To-day, before those red devils came to tear her away from me, she promised to become my wife.”

“I believe you, boy!” exclaimed Darke. “I could not intrust her to the protecting love of a better man. If we can only save her she shall be yours!”

“Thank you,” said the young man, earnestly. “We _must_ save her from that demon’s power! The thought that she is in his hands is maddening! But we must act. I will go to the settlement and obtain horses and enlist Pete Wimple in our cause, while you proceed to the cave to secure the services of the big hunter. I’m sure he will not refuse us his aid.”

“Right,” assented Darke. “Where shall be our place of rendezvous?”

“Near the big pine tree at the edge of the forest. We must be mounted and on our way before daylight.”

The fire had caught in the great oak trees that had been left close up by the walls of the woodman’s home as a partial protection against wind and storm, and the flames, shooting heavenward, cast a lurid glow over the dark forest for quite a distance in every direction.

The two men hastened away, the burning cabin lighting their way through the wood, Death, the blood-hound keeping close to Darke and manifesting his sense of the calamity that had overtaken them by giving utterance ever and anon to low, sorrowful whines.