“Come, sir! prepare your musket to fire,” said Boone, stooping down to Joe, who still remained apparently frozen to the snow-crust.

“Oh!  I’m so sick!” replied Joe.

“If you do not keep with us, you will lose your scalp to a certainty,” said Boone.  Joe was well in a second.  The party were now about midway between the fallen trunk where Mary was concealed, and the great encampment-tree.  Boone rose erect for an instant, and beheld the former, and the single Indian (the chief) who was there.  One of the Indians again started out from the fire, in the direction of the whites for more fuel.  Boone once more passed the word for his little band to lie down.  The tall savage came within a few feet of them.  His tomahawk accidentally fell from his hand, and in his endeavour to catch it, he knocked it within a few feet of Sneak’s head.  He stepped carelessly aside, and stooped down for it.  A strangling and gushing sound was heard, and falling prostrate, he died without a groan.  Sneak had nearly severed his head from his body at one blow with his hunting-knife.

At this juncture Mary sprang from her hiding-place.  Her voice reached the ears of her father, but before he could run to her assistance, the chiefs loud tones rang through the forest.  Boone and the rest sprang forward, and fired upon the savages under the spreading tree.  At the second discharge the Indians gave way, and while Col.  Cooper, the oarsmen, and the neighbours that had joined the party in the morning, pursued the flying foe, Boone and the remainder ran towards the fallen trunk where Mary had been concealed, but approaching in different directions.  Glenn was the first to rush upon the chief, and it was his ball that whizzed so near the Indian’s head when he bore away the shrieking maiden.  The rest only fired in the direction of the log, not thinking that Mary had left her covert.  They soon met at the fallen tree, under which was the pit, all except Glenn, who sprang forward in pursuit of the chief, and Sneak, who had made a wide circuit for the purpose of reaching the scene of action from an opposite direction, entirely regardless of the danger of being shot by his friends.

[Illustration:  “It is your father, my poor child!” said Roughgrove, pressing the girl to his heart.—­P. 165]

“She’s gone! she’s gone!” exclaimed Roughgrove, looking aghast at the vacated pit under the fallen trunk.  “But we will have her yet,” said Boone, as he heard Glenn discharge a pistol a few paces apart in the bushes.  The report was followed by a yell, not from the chief, but Sneak, and the next moment the rifle of the latter was likewise heard.  Still the Indian was not dispatched, for the instant afterwards his tomahawk, which was hurled without effect, came sailing over the bushes, and penetrated a tree hard by, some fifteen or twenty feet above the earth, where it entered the wood with such force that it remained firmly fixed.  Now succeeded a struggle—­a violent blow was heard—­the fall of the Indian, and all was comparatively still.  A minute afterwards, Sneak emerged from the thicket, bearing the inanimate body of Mary in his arms, and followed by Glenn.