There was no mystery about it. My enemy had come with sleuth-hound
Indians at his back to run me down. The savages were, no doubt, that
band of over-mountain Cherokees pledged by their chief to pilot the
powder convoy; and by their help the baronet had tracked me.

This was the first thought, caught at in passing; but when I came to
look again I saw what had been done. Sprawled on the ground before the
burning brush pile, his wrinkled face a hideous mask of suffering, with
the eyeballs starting from their sockets in the death-wrench, lay my
faithful Darius.

By what inhuman tortures they had made him point the way, or how or why
they slew him at the last, I know not, but I made sure it was his
death-scream that had halted me and set the stillness of the forest
alive with ghastly echoes.

At sight of the stiffening body of the faithful slave you may suppose my
blood ran cold and hot by turns, and that his blood cried out for
vengeance from the sod that soaked it up. With ten years more of youth
and less of age I might have tried to hew my way to Falconnet's stirrup,
and so to square accounts with him. But had I been a-mind to rush upon
the stage without my cue, another climax in the ghastly tragedy forbade
it.

This climax turned upon the capture of my horse-boy, Tomas. The other
blacks, it seemed, had made good their escape; but Tomas, lagging behind
through fear or foolishness, had given these copper-colored devils leave
to run him down and drag him back into the fire light, with yells of
savage triumph.