“White man send for friend!” suggested the Indian, tauntingly.

Herbert had listened to this colloquy with varying emotions, and his anger and indignation were stirred by the cold-blooded cruelty of the savage.  He stood motionless, seen by neither party, but he held his weapon leveled at the Indian, ready to shoot at an instant’s warning.  Brought up, as he had been, with a horror for scenes of violence, and a feeling that human life was sacred, he had a great repugnance to use his weapon, even where it seemed his urgent duty to do so.  He felt that on him, young as he was, rested a weighty responsibility.  He could save the life of a man of his own color, but only by killing or disabling a red man.  Indian though he was, his life, too, was sacred; but when he threatened the life of another he forfeited his claim to consideration.

Herbert hesitated till he saw it was no longer safe to do so—­till he saw that it was the unalterable determination of the Indian to kill the hunter, and then, his face pale and fixed, he pulled the trigger.

His bullet passed through the shoulder of the savage.  The latter uttered a shrill cry of surprise and dismay, and his weapon fell at his feet, while he pressed his left hand to his wounded shoulder.

The hunter, amazed at the interruption, which had been of such essential service to him, lost not a moment in availing himself of it.  He bounded forward, and before the savage well knew what he purposed, he had picked up his fallen weapon, and, leveling it at his wounded foe, fired.

His bullet was not meant to disable, but to kill.  It penetrated the heart of the savage, and, staggering back, he fell, his face distorted with rage and disappointment.

“The tables are turned, my red friend!” said the hunter, coolly.  “It’s your life, not mine, this time!”

At that moment Herbert, pale and shocked, but relieved as well, pressed forward, and the hunter saw him for the first time.

“Was it you, boy, who fired the shot?” asked the hunter, in surprise.

“Yes,” answered Herbert.

“Then I owe you my life, and that’s a debt Jack Holden isn’t likely to forget!”

CHAPTER XXXI.

Jack Holden on the Indian question.

It is a terrible thing to see a man stretched out in death who but a minute before stood full of life and strength.  Herbert gazed at the dead Indian with a strange sensation of pity and relief, and could hardly realize that, but for his interposition, it would have been the hunter, not the Indian, who would have lost his life.

The hunter was more used to such scenes, and his calmness was unruffled.

“That’s the end of the dog!” he said, touching with his foot the dead body.

“What made him want to kill you?” asked Herbert.

“Revenge,” answered Holden.