The bright sun, making the dewdrops glisten on the leaves, lighted up a tragedy.  Near him lay an Indian whose vacant, sightless eyes were fixed in death.  Beyond lay four more savages, the peculiar, inert position of whose limbs, the formlessness, as it were, as if they had been thrown from a great height and never moved again, attested that here, too, life had been extinguished.  Joe took in only one detail—­the cloven skull of the nearest—­when he turned away sickened.  He remembered it all now.  The advance, the rush, the fight—­all returned.  He saw again Wetzel’s shadowy form darting like a demon into the whirl of conflict; he heard again that hoarse, booming roar with which the Avenger accompanied his blows.  Joe’s gaze swept the glade, but found no trace of the hunter.

He saw Silvertip and another Indian bathing a wound on Girty’s head.  The renegade groaned and writhed in pain.  Near him lay Kate, with white face and closed eyes.  She was unconscious, or dead.  Jim sat crouched under a tree to which he was tied.

“Joe, are you badly hurt?” asked the latter, in deep solicitude.

“No, I guess not; I don’t know,” answered Joe.  “Is poor Kate dead?”

“No, she has fainted.”

“Where’s Nell?”

“Gone,” replied Jim, lowering his voice, and glancing at the Indians.  They were too busy trying to bandage Girty’s head to pay any attention to their prisoners.  “That whirlwind was Wetzel, wasn’t it?”

“Yes; how’d you know?”

“I was awake last night.  I had an oppressive feeling, perhaps a presentiment.  Anyway, I couldn’t sleep.  I heard that wind blow through the forest, and thought my blood would freeze.  The moan is the same as the night wind, the same soft sigh, only louder and somehow pregnant with superhuman power.  To speak of it in broad daylight one seems superstitious, but to hear it in the darkness of this lonely forest, it is fearful!  I hope I am not a coward; I certainly know I was deathly frightened.  No wonder I was scared!  Look at these dead Indians, all killed in a moment.  I heard the moan; I saw Silvertip disappear, and the other two savages rise.  Then something huge dropped from the rock; a bright object seemed to circle round the savages; they uttered one short yell, and sank to rise no more.  Somehow at once I suspected that this shadowy form, with its lightninglike movements, its glittering hatchet, was Wetzel.  When he plunged into the midst of the other savages I distinctly recognized him, and saw that he had a bundle, possibly his coat, wrapped round his left arm, and his right hand held the glittering tomahawk.  I saw him strike that big Indian there, the one lying with split skull.  His wonderful daring and quickness seemed to make the savages turn at random.  He broke through the circle, swung Nell under his arm, slashed at my bonds as he passed by, and then was gone as he had come.  Not until after you were struck, and Silvertip came up to me, was I aware my bonds were cut.  Wetzel’s hatchet had severed them; it even cut my side, which was bleeding.  I was free to help, to fight, and I did not know it.  Fool that I am!”