They hurried down the slant, brushing through the thicket, the sound of their approach being covered by the appalling cries of the victim and the demon-like tumult of the drunken braves.  The two scouts were racked with soul pain as they went on so that they could scarcely hold their peace and keep their feet from running.  A new sense of the capacity for evil in the heart of man entered the mind of Jack.  They had come close to the frightful scene, when suddenly a deep silence fell upon it.  Thank God, the victim had gone beyond the reach of pain.  Something had happened in his passing—­perhaps the savages had thought it a sign from Heaven.  For a moment their clamor had ceased.  The two scouts could plainly see the poor man behind a red veil of flame.  Suddenly the white leader of the raiders approached the pyre, limping on his wooden stump, with a stick in his hand, and prodded the face of the victim.  It was his last act.  Solomon was taking aim.  His rifle spoke.  Red Snout tumbled forward into the fire.  Then what a scurry among the Indians!  They vanished and so suddenly that Jack wondered where they had gone.  Solomon stood reloading the rifle barrel he had just emptied.  Then he said: 

“Come on an’ do as I do.”

Solomon ran until they had come near.  Then he jumped from tree to tree, stopping at each long enough to survey the ground beyond it.  This was what he called “swapping cover.”  From behind a tree near the fire he shouted in the Indian tongue: 

“Red men, you have made the Great Spirit angry.  He has sent the Son of the Thunder to slay you with his lightning.”

No truer words had ever left the lips of man.  His hand rose and swung back of his shoulder and shot forward.  The round missile sailed through the firelight and beyond it and sank into black shadows in the great cavern at Rocky Creek—­a famous camping-place in the old time.  Then a flash of white light and a roar that shook the hills!  A blast of gravel and dust and debris shot upward and pelted down upon the earth.  Bits of rock and wood and an Indian’s arm and foot fell in the firelight.  A number of dusky figures scurried out of the mouth of the cavern and ran for their lives shouting prayers to Manitou as they disappeared in the darkness.  Solomon pulled the embers from around the feet of the victim.

“Now, by the good God A’mighty, ’pears to me we got the skeer shifted so the red man’ll be the rabbit fer a while an’ I wouldn’t wonder,” said Solomon, as he stood looking down at the scene.  “He ain’t a-goin’ to like the look o’ a pale face—­not overly much.  Them Injuns that got erway ‘ll never stop runnin’ till they’ve reached the middle o’ next week.”

He seized the foot of Red Snout and pulled his head out of the fire.

“You ol’ hellion!” Solomon exclaimed.  “You dog o’ the devil!  Tumbled into hell whar ye b’long at last, didn’t ye?  Jack, you take that luther bucket an’ bring some water out o’ the creek an’ put out this fire.  The ring on this ‘ere ol’ wooden leg is wuth a hundred pounds.”