The dark hand which held the tomahawk trembled so that little glints
of moonlight glanced from the bright steel.
From far back in the forest-deeps came that same low moaning:
"Um-m-mm-woo-o-o-o!"
It rose from a faint murmur and swelled to a deep moan, soft but
clear, and ended in a wail like that of a lost soul.
The break it made in that dead silence was awful. Joe's blood seemed
to have curdled and frozen; a cold sweat oozed from his skin, and it
was as if a clammy hand clutched at his heart. He tried to persuade
himself that the fear displayed by the savage was only superstition,
and that that moan was but the sigh of the night wind.
The Indian sentinel stood as if paralyzed an instant after that
weird cry, and then, swift as a flash, and as noiseless, he was gone
into the gloomy forest. He had fled without awakening his
companions.
Once more the moaning cry arose and swelled mournfully on the still
night air. It was close at hand!
"The Wind of Death," whispered Joe.
He was shaken and unnerved by the events of the past two days, and
dazed from his wound. His strength deserted him, and he lost
consciousness.
Chapter VI.
One evening, several day previous to the capture of the brothers, a
solitary hunter stopped before a deserted log cabin which stood on
the bank of a stream fifty miles or more inland from the Ohio River.
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