"He'll never awake," put in the bee-hunter, solemnly--"the man is
dead. See; there is blood on the side of his head, and a rifle-
bullet has left its hole there."
Even while speaking, the bee-hunter advanced, and raising a sort of
shawl, that once had been used as an ornament, and which had last
been thrown carelessly over the head of its late owner, he exposed
the well-known features of Elks-foot, the Pottawattamie, who had
left them little more than twenty-four hours before! The warrior had
been shot by a rifle-bullet directly through the temple, and had
been scalped. The powder had been taken from his horn, and the
bullets from his pouch; but, beyond this, he had not been plundered.
The body was carefully placed against a tree, in a sitting attitude,
the rifle was laid across its legs, and there it had been left, in
the centre of the openings, to become food for beasts of prey, and
to have its bones bleached by the snows and the rains!
The bee-hunter shuddered, as he gazed at this fearful memorial of
the violence against which even a wilderness could afford no
sufficient protection. That Pigeonswing had slain his late fellow-
guest, le Bourdon had no doubt, and he sickened at the thought.
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