“I won’t go back to the village,” he said.

The hunter stood in his favorite position, leaning on his long rifle, and made no response.

“I won’t go,” continued Joe, earnestly.  “Let me stay with you.  If at any time I hamper you, or can not keep the pace, then leave me to shift for myself; but don’t make me go until I weaken.  Let me stay.”

Fire and fearlessness spoke in Joe’s every word, and his gray eyes contracted with their peculiar steely flash.  Plain it was that, while he might fail to keep pace with Wetzel, he did not fear this dangerous country, and, if it must be, would face it alone.

Wetzel extended his broad hand and gave his comrade’s a viselike squeeze.  To allow the lad to remain with him was more than he would have done for any other person in the world.  Far better to keep the lad under his protection while it was possible, for Joe was taking that war-trail which had for every hunter, somewhere along its bloody course, a bullet, a knife, or a tomahawk.  Wetzel knew that Joe was conscious of this inevitable conclusion, for it showed in his white face, and in the resolve in his big, gray eyes.

So there, in the shade of a towering oak, the Indian-killer admitted the boy into his friendship, and into a life which would no longer be play, but eventful, stirring, hazardous.

“Wal, lad, stay,” he said, with that rare smile which brightened his dark face like a ray of stray sunshine.  “We’ll hang round these diggins a few days.  First off, we’ll take in the lay of the land.  You go down stream a ways an’ scout round some, while I go up, an’ then circle down.  Move slow, now, an’ don’t miss nothin’.”

Joe followed the stream a mile or more.  He kept close in the shade of willows, and never walked across an open glade without first waiting and watching.  He listened to all sounds; but none were unfamiliar.  He closely examined the sand along the stream, and the moss and leaves under the trees.  When he had been separated from Wetzel several hours, and concluded he would slowly return to camp, he ran across a well-beaten path winding through the forest.  This was, perhaps, one of the bridle-trails Wetzel had referred to.  He bent over the worn grass with keen scrutiny.

Crack!

The loud report of a heavily charged rifle rang out.  Joe felt the zip of a bullet as it fanned his cheek.  With an agile leap he gained the shelter of a tree, from behind which he peeped to see who had shot at him.  He was just in time to detect the dark form of an Indian dart behind the foliage an hundred yards down the path.  Joe expected to see other Indians, and to hear more shots, but he was mistaken.  Evidently the savage was alone, for the tree Joe had taken refuge behind was scarcely large enough to screen his body, which disadvantage the other Indians would have been quick to note.