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Updated: June 26, 2025
Far up on the hillside an owl hooted dismally, and an instant later, faint and far away, came an answer so low as to be almost indistinct. The borderman raised himself erect as he released her. "It's only an owl," she said in relief. His eyes gleamed like stars. "It's Wetzel, an' it means Injuns!" Then he was gone into the darkness.
At the Wetzel home the Wetzel boys vowed relentless war against all Indians. Their hatchets should never be dropped until not a redskin roamed the woods. Lewis was now twenty-three: a borderman through and through and skilled almost beyond all others.
Legget and Brandt no longer left any token of their course. They were riding the horses. All the borderman cared to know was if Wetzel still pursued. He passed on swiftly up a hill, through a wood of birches where the trail showed on a line of broken ferns, then out upon a low ridge where patches of grass grew sparsely.
Her pale face and languid air perplexed and worried her father and her friends. She explained to them that the heat affected her disagreeably. Long days had passed since that Sunday morning when she kissed the borderman. What transports of sweet hope and fear were hers then! How shame had scorched her happiness! Yet still she gloried in the act.
How dark it had suddenly become! A sheet of pale light flared across the overcast heavens. "A storm!" exclaimed Helen. "Alone on this mountain-top with a storm coming. Am I frightened? I don't believe it. At least I'm safe from that ruffian Brandt. Oh! if my borderman would only come!" Helen changed her position from beside the tree, to the hollow under the stone.
When opposite the rock Jonathan saw a broken fern hanging over the edge. The heavy trail of the horses ran close beside it. Then with that thoroughness of search which made the borderman what he was, Jonathan leaped upon the rock. There, lying in the midst of the ferns, lay an Indian with sullen, somber face set in the repose of death. In his side was a small bullet hole.
While going over his version of the attack, Jonathan followed Brandt's trail, as had Wetzel, to where it ended in the river. The old borderman had continued on down stream along the sandy shore. The outlaw remained in the water to hide his trail. At one point Wetzel turned north. This move puzzled Jonathan, as did also the peculiar tracks.
"I do not wait on the girls," he replied with a grave smile. "Oh, you don't? Do you expect them to wait on you?" she asked, feeling, now she had made this silent man talk, once more at her ease. "I am a borderman," replied Jonathan. There was a certain dignity or sadness in his answer which reminded Helen of Colonel Zane's portrayal of a borderman's life. It struck her keenly.
An unlettered borderman, who knew only the woods, whose life was hard and cruel, whose hands were red with Indian blood, whose vengeance had not spared men even of his own race. He could not believe she really loved him. Wildly impulsive as girls were at times, she had kissed him. She had been grateful, carried away by a generous feeling for him as the protector of her father.
The borderman had no other idea than that of following the trail to learn all this. Taking the desperate chances warranted under the circumstances, he walked boldly forward in his comrade's footsteps. Deep and gloomy was the forest adjoining the birch grove.
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