It flashed into Joe’s mind that other savages were in the forest; they had run across the Shawnees’ trail, and were thus communicating with them.  Soon dark figures could be discerned against the patches of green thicket; they came nearer and nearer, and now entered the open glade where Silvertip stood with his warriors.

Joe counted twelve, and noted that they differed from his captors.  He had only time to see that this difference consisted in the head-dress, and in the color and quantity of paint on their bodies, when his gaze was attracted and riveted to the foremost figures.

The first was that of a very tall and stately chief, toward whom Silvertip now advanced with every show of respect.  In this Indian’s commanding stature, in his reddish-bronze face, stern and powerful, there were readable the characteristics of a king.  In his deep-set eyes, gleaming from under a ponderous brow; in his mastiff-like jaw; in every feature of his haughty face were visible all the high intelligence, the consciousness of past valor, and the power and authority that denote a great chieftain.

The second figure was equally striking for the remarkable contrast it afforded to the chief’s.  Despite the gaudy garments, the paint, the fringed and beaded buckskin leggins—­all the Indian accouterments and garments which bedecked this person, he would have been known anywhere as a white man.  His skin was burned to a dark bronze, but it had not the red tinge which characterizes the Indian.  This white man had, indeed, a strange physiognomy.  The forehead was narrow and sloped backward from the brow, denoting animal instincts.  The eyes were close together, yellowish-brown in color, and had a peculiar vibrating movement, as though they were hung on a pivot, like a compass-needle.  The nose was long and hooked, and the mouth set in a thin, cruel line.  There was in the man’s aspect an extraordinary combination of ignorance, vanity, cunning and ferocity.

While the two chiefs held a short consultation, this savage-appearing white man addressed the brothers.

“Who’re you, an’ where you goin’?” he asked gruffly, confronting Jim.

“My name is Downs.  I am a preacher, and was on my way to the Moravian Mission to preach to the Indians.  You are a white man; will you help us?”

If Jim expected the information would please his interrogator, he was mistaken.

“So you’re one of ’em?  Yes, I’ll do suthin’ fer you when I git back from this hunt.  I’ll cut your heart out, chop it up, an’ feed it to the buzzards,” he said fiercely, concluding his threat by striking Jim a cruel blow on the head.

Joe paled deathly white at this cowardly action, and his eyes, as they met the gaze of the ruffian, contracted with their characteristic steely glow, as if some powerful force within the depths of his being were at white heat and only this pale flash came to the surface.

“You ain’t a preacher?” questioned the man, meeting something in Joe’s glance that had been absent from Jim’s.