CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAST NIGHT-HAWK.

Tired and disheartened in his search for our heroine, Colonel Argent O’Neill rejoined his soldiers in the Night-Hawk’s camp an hour or so before day.

He found Royal Funk but slightly wounded, and, with Whalley and Zigler, the two guards drugged by Spagano, closely watched by the troops. Funk looked daggers at the officers as he approached and a smile of satisfaction stole over his bronzed face when he noted that Huldah had escaped.

“So you spoke truly when you prophesied that we would meet again,” exclaimed the colonel, halting before the outlaw with drawn sword. “Fire and furies! I’m rejoiced that we have met, and fortune has given me the best hand, as you see. It’s a hand of trumps, too.”

“But, colonel, where’s the girl?”

The words were quietly but tauntingly spoken, and the smile grew broader on the Night-Hawk’s face while his lips moved.

O’Neill did not reply, but allowed his face to become livid with smothered anger.

“Yes, colonel, where is the girl?” he asked, again. “If you hold such a superb hand, why didn’t you capture my queen with one of your trumps?”

“Because your knave—that infernal Indian—baffled me,” said O’Neill, apparently a little calmer.

“Ah, then, he’ll keep the prize.”

“No, we found him dead in the woods; but the girl was gone!”

A flash of hope lighted up the renegade’s eyes.

“You should find her, then.”

“Alas! I have no good trailer with me.”

“I could track her.”

“But you won’t!” retorted the colonel. “Roy Funk, I’m not going to set you free and trust to your guidance. Colonel Argent O’Neill is not a condemned fool! But you’ll be free directly—free forever,” and the old malignant look came back to the red-coat’s eyes. “We’re going to leave this place. Curse the winding paths of this American wood! No such forests in England; that is God’s land; this the devil’s. Our guide got bewildered, else we would have been here long ago, and we would have had the girl, too.”

“She will never be yours now, sir.”

“Never! how do you know that?”

“I need not explain. Suffice it to say, Colonel O’Neill, that she will never in this world become your property.”

“Will she ever become yours?” asked the soldier, with a devilish leer, as he leaned forward.

“That remains to be seen,” was the outlaw’s calm reply.

“What! do you plot in the very jaws of death?” cried O’Neill, springing back. “Fire and furies! I’ll settle _that_ question before the break of day. Boys, are your muskets loaded?”

A tall sergeant answered in the affirmative.

“I’m going to exterminate the Night-Hawks of the fire-lands,” continued the angry colonel, turning to Funk again. “As you are their leader, you should be the last survivor. Kings often witness the destruction of their kingdoms. Ready to die, I suppose, Roy Funk?”

“Ready!” was the firm response.

“What would you do did I stand in your shoes and you in mine?”

“I’d shoot you down like a dog!”

“But I’m more merciful. I’m going to grant you a soldier’s death, for you have fought for the flag of our king.”

Then six soldiers were selected as executioners, and Whalley and Zigler were placed side by side, fifteen paces from the muzzles of the leveled muskets. Royal Funk was taken aside and closely guarded on a spot from whence he could witness the death of the last of his band.

He spoke to the doomed men and bade them die game, which they promised to do.

Whalley and Zigler were brave men. They had faced death in the covert, before stern vigilance committees, and the field of battle, and they were not the persons to become frightened at the monster’s hideous visage now.

Colonel O’Neill conducted the execution. He gave the command of death in a stern tone, characteristic of the disciplined soldier that he was, and the leaden volley stretched the Night-Hawks dead upon the leaves.

“Well done, was it not?” he said, turning to Funk who had witnessed the murder without an outward sign of emotion. “My men shoot well.”

“Quite well,” was the reply, and as the outlaw’s glance fell upon the still forms on the ground, for the first time, a tear of affection stole to his eye.

“Braver men than they never lived,” he murmured; and then, in a lower tone: “I am the last.”

He was now led forward, and halted between the corpses of his two last followers.

“I accord you a liberty,” said O’Neill, admiring, despite his hate, the unflinching courage of the man with whom he was dealing. “Raynor, untie his hands.”

The soldier addressed drew a knife and obeyed the command.

Funk’s hands crept around to his side, and seemed to hang listlessly there.

“Royal Funk, would you see the deadly flash?” asked O’Neill.

“I am a soldier, I would die as one!” was the reply.

The colonel drew a large handkerchief, and tossed it to a soldier saying:

“Blindfold him, then. As a soldier, shall the outlaw die,” he said, sarcastically.

Two soldiers, one bearing a musket, now stepped forward to blindfold the Night-Hawk’s black eyes. One stepped behind him and was in the act of drawing the kerchief into position, when Funk’s hands left his side. They shot upward like rockets, and the soldier who stood before him with bayoneted gun was hurled backward, like the covering of an exploding rocket. His musket was wrenched from his hand at the same moment, and the blindfolder was brained with the stock before anybody could realize the terrible state of affairs.

Roy Funk was free, with a musket in his hand!

Like a tiger he leaped upon Colonel O’Neill, who retreated a step, and threw up his sword to ward off the glistening bayonet.

But as well he might have tried to stop the descent of an avalanche with a straw.

The bayonet came down upon his breast with giant force, and the next instant he staggered back with the shining steel buried among his vitals!

“There, take that, colonel,” cried Royal Funk, as he sent the bayonet home, and then he hurled to the earth the only soldier who had presence of mind enough to attempt to impede his further progress.

“Hurrah! Roy Funk is free again! Another band of Night-Hawks shall gather at his call, and woe to the Briton who crosses his path then.”

He turned on his heel with the last word, and darted away.

The soldiers regained their equilibrium as he disappeared, and a volley that hurtled harmlessly among the branches was sent after him.

“Free! free to hate the English, as I hate the Americans,” he murmured, as he bounded through the forest. “They have killed my Night-Hawks, and by heaven! from this hour I never spare an English life. Now for the lake shore, where I gathered the brave fellows who sleep beneath British guns. There I’ll find others as brave, perhaps, as they, and we’ll hunt O’Neill’s detachment down like the Indian hunts the slayers of his wigwam pets. O’Neill—I’ve settled _him_! Forever I’ve canceled accounts with that liveried dog. But the girl Huldah Armstrong? Shall I give her up, now that I am free?”

He paused suddenly and seemed inclined to retrace his steps.

He was running in a north-easterly direction, his objective point the lake, and he knew—he had gleaned from O’Neill’s words—that Spangano had fled with the settler’s daughter in an opposite direction.

The outlaw was tempted to go back, and hunt for the prize that had been his.

He had run a great distance, and daylight was chasing night from the forest of the Huron.

It was extremely hazardous for him to go back now. The British troops were between him and the missing girl, and no doubt they would trail him to the death for the murder of their colonel. Perhaps, while he stood undecided how to act, they were on his track.

“I can return with my new men,” he said, suddenly, “and then I can snatch Huldah from my enemies. It’s getting too light for me to go back. I’ll not risk my life for a girl, now.”

He started forward again as he spoke the last word, but his rapid gait had dwindled into the well-known dog-trot of the Indian, and his whiter associate, the renegade.

His eagle eye took in every thing as he pushed forward, and all at once it flashed with a new light, and he halted and sprung behind a tree.

Some dark figure was approaching in the gray dawn; it was coming directly toward him. That it was a man he at once conceived, and the swaying of the body proclaimed him a white. If Indians were pursuing the man, the outlaw was safe; he could meet them boldly; but if white was chasing white, he had best remain concealed. He kept his eye on the runner until he almost started from the tree with excitement, and an oath escaped his lips.

The fugitive was Captain Strong, and he bore Huldah Armstrong in his arms!

“In the name of heaven, how did he get the girl?—and how did he escape the vengeance of the settlers?” exclaimed the Night-Hawk, looking at the sight that greeted his eyes. “But fate is aiding me, and I’ll make something of this golden opportunity.”

For several moments after the discovery of his identity, Zebulon Strong, flying from Wolf-Cap and his friends, as the reader already knows, continued to run directly toward Funk, but suddenly he veered toward the right.

Had he caught a glimpse of his new foe? The outlaw was inclined to believe thus, and cocked his musket with an oath.

“I’ve shot deer with muskets,” he said, audibly, “and as a running shot, I’ve been celebrated. Can I hit a man’s head at forty yards? Well, if I can’t, then my name isn’t Royal Funk!”

Talking thus to himself, the outlaw raised the weapon, and glanced over the glittering barrel at his rival, who ran on, unconscious of the new foe.

For a moment Funk sighted the moving figure, and then a jet of flame leaped from the bore of the gun.

Captain Strong stopped suddenly in his tracks, and, with the cry of “A dead shot!” the murderer bounded from the tree and ran toward him.

But the traitor suddenly attempted to continue his flight. He ran forward a few steps, then reeled, and fell dead!

Huldah, released, started back and gazed bewildered upon the corpse. Her unexpected delivery had stunned her senses, for she did not move nor take her eyes from the dead until a hand encircled her arm.

Then she started violently, and recognized her new captor with a shriek.

“Mine again, and forever, girl!” cried the outlaw, as he jerked her from the ground, and then he asked, quickly, “Who chased you?”

“You shall see presently,” she cried, casting a quick, wishful look toward the river.

“Not Indians, as I know,” said Funk, reading the language of her eyes. “Well, we’ll outwit ’em, Huldah, whoever they be. Roy Funk is alone in the world now. His boys are all dead, and he wants somebody to cheer his heart.”

He spoke the last words while he was running, with our heroine in his arms, in a northerly direction, and at no insignificant pace.

“If I know these woods, we’re not far from a place of safety. Whoever hunts you shall never take you back to the old stamping-ground. Huldah Armstrong, you will not believe me, perhaps, when I say I love you. I do, earnestly, truly, and with a pure love. You could make a man of Royal Funk, if you would. Your obstinacy, coupled with your pretty face, has caused me to act as I have. If the stars love their Creator and the dove his burnished sweetheart, I love you. Your lovers are out of the way, now—all save Royal Funk, I mean. Will you not wean him from his wild life by loving him? Will you not be the making of a _man_?”

He looked down into the girl’s eyes, as he spoke, with genuine earnestness, and for a moment his footsteps were the only noise-makers in the great forest.

Then she answered him:

“Royal Funk, do not seek my love. It can never be yours.”

He sighed:

“Then I must do that which I would not. You shall be my wife. Death alone shall separate us!”

Huldah started. Captain Strong had uttered the same words!