“Them side-fins tell us the story.  Girty, an’ his redskins hev took this branch,” said Wetzel, positively.  “The other leads to the Huron towns.  Girty’s got a place near the Delaware camp somewheres.  I’ve tried to find it a good many times.  He’s took more’n one white lass there, an’ nobody ever seen her agin.”

“Fiend!  To think of a white woman, maybe a girl like Nell Wells, at the mercy of those red devils!”

“Young fellar, don’t go wrong.  I’ll allow Injuns is bad enough; but I never hearn tell of one abusin’ a white woman, as mayhap you mean.  Injuns marry white women sometimes; kill an’ scalp ’em often, but that’s all.  It’s men of our own color, renegades like this Girty, as do worse’n murder.”

Here was the amazing circumstance of Lewis Wetzel, the acknowledged unsatiable foe of all redmen, speaking a good word for his enemies.  Joe was so astonished he did not attempt to answer.

“Here’s where they got in the canoe.  One more look, an’ then we’re off,” said Wetzel.  He strode up and down the sandy beach; examined the willows, and scrutinized the sand.  Suddenly he bent over and picked up an object from the water.  His sharp eyes had caught the glint of something white, which, upon being examined, proved to be a small ivory or bone buckle with a piece broken out.  He showed it to Joe.

“By heavens!  Wetzel, that’s a buckle off Nell Well’s shoe.  I’ve seen it too many times to mistake it.”

“I was afeared Girty hed your friends, the sisters, an’ mebbe your brother, too.  Jack Zane said the renegade was hangin’ round the village, an’ that couldn’t be fer no good.”

“Come on.  Let’s kill the fiend!” cried Joe, white to the lips.

“I calkilate they’re about a mile down stream, makin’ camp fer the night.  I know the place.  There’s a fine spring, an, look!  D’ye see them crows flyin’ round thet big oak with the bleached top?  Hear them cawin’?  You might think they was chasin’ a hawk, or king-birds were arter ’em, but thet fuss they’re makin’ is because they see Injuns.”

“Well?” asked Joe, impatiently.

“It’ll be moonlight a while arter midnight.  We’ll lay low an’ wait, an’ then—–­”

The sharp click of his teeth, like the snap of a steel trap, completed the sentence.  Joe said no more, but followed the hunter into the woods.  Stopping near a fallen tree, Wetzel raked up a bundle of leaves and spread them on the ground.  Then he cut a few spreading branches from a beech, and leaned them against a log.  Bidding the lad crawl in before he took one last look around and then made his way under the shelter.