The procession halted before this group, and two brawny braves pushed the hunter forward.  Simon Girty’s face betrayed satisfaction; Elliott’s shifty eyes snapped, and the dark, repulsive face of the other Girty exhibited an exultant joy.  These desperadoes had feared this hunter.

Wingenund, with a majestic wave of his arm, silenced the yelling horde of frenzied savages and stepped before the captive.

The deadly foes were once again face to face.  The chieftain’s lofty figure and dark, sleek head, now bare of plumes, towered over the other Indians, but he was not obliged to lower his gaze in order to look straight into the hunter’s eyes.

Verily this hunter merited the respect which shone in the great chieftain’s glance.  Like a mountain-ash he stood, straight and strong, his magnificent frame tapering wedge-like from his broad shoulders.  The bulging line of his thick neck, the deep chest, the knotty contour of his bared forearm, and the full curves of his legs—­all denoted a wonderful muscular development.

The power expressed in this man’s body seemed intensified in his features.  His face was white and cold, his jaw square and set; his coal-black eyes glittered with almost a superhuman fire.  And his hair, darker than the wing of a crow, fell far below his shoulders; matted and tangled as it was, still it hung to his waist, and had it been combed out, must have reached his knees.

One long moment Wingenund stood facing his foe, and then over the multitude and through the valley rolled his sonorous voice: 

“Deathwind dies at dawn!”

The hunter was tied to a tree and left in view of the Indian populace.  The children ran fearfully by; the braves gazed long at the great foe of their race; the warriors passed in gloomy silence.  The savages’ tricks of torture, all their diabolical ingenuity of inflicting pain was suppressed, awaiting the hour of sunrise when this hated Long Knife was to die.

Only one person offered an insult to the prisoner; he was a man of his own color.  Jim Girty stopped before him, his yellowish eyes lighted by a tigerish glare, his lips curled in a snarl, and from between them issuing the odor of the fir traders’ vile rum.

“You’ll soon be feed fer the buzzards,” he croaked, in his hoarse voice.  He had so often strewed the plains with human flesh for the carrion birds that the thought had a deep fascination for him.  “D’ye hear, scalp-hunter?  Feed for buzzards!” He deliberately spat in the hunter’s face.  “D’ye hear?” he repeated.

There was no answer save that which glittered in the hunter’s eye.  But the renegade could not read it because he did not meet that flaming glance.  Wild horses could not have dragged him to face this man had he been free.  Even now a chill crept over Girty.  For a moment he was enthralled by a mysterious fear, half paralyzed by a foreshadowing of what would be this hunter’s vengeance.  Then he shook off his craven fear.  He was free; the hunter’s doom was sure.  His sharp face was again wreathed in a savage leer, and he spat once more on the prisoner.