The three Indians were staring at me as though that murderer aloft on his eyrie did not exist. I, too, had forgotten him for the moment; and it was only the loud explosion of his smooth-bore that shocked us to the instant necessity of the situation.

The bullet screamed through the leaves above us; we clapped our rifles to our cheeks, striving to glimpse him. Nothing moved on the rocky shelf.

“He fired to signal his friends,” whispered the Mohican. “He must believe them to be within hearing distance.”

I set my teeth and stared savagely at the cliff.

“If that is so,” said I, “we must leave him here and pull foot.”

There was a tense silence,