My nerves jumped, but I mastered them by reasoning that the Englishman had been shot by a chance ball and had attempted to leave the cabin, thinking to gain our shelter and to die there. Death had overtaken him as he was opening the door. That it was the Englishman's hand I had touched was evidenced by the shirt-sleeve, puckered in at the wrist. I released the poor hand and was resuming my way when a slight sound caused me to hold my breath. Then a heavy weight landed on my back, knocking the breath from my lungs with an explosive grunt. Next, the night was ripped from horizon to horizon with a jagged streak of red. CHAPTER IX DALE ESCAPES When I recovered my senses I was being dragged over the ground by means of a cord around my chest and under my arms. My wrists were lashed together and my ankles were likewise secured. The first thing my eyes beheld were the red loopholes and window of the lower cabin, and the flames crawling through the two holes I had made in the roof. My capture had revealed our desertion of the cabin, and the Indians had lost no time in entering and firing it. Smoke and flames were pouring from the end window of the Granville cabin also. As the red tongues licked across the top of the doorway they threw into relief the arm and hand of the old Englishman still hanging over the threshold. My head felt as though it was cracked wide open and it throbbed most sickeningly. I managed to lift it a bit to escape further bruises as my captor roughly hauled me to the forest. The third cabin, the one occupied by the Dales, burst into flames as I was being yanked into the first fringe of bushes. The valley was now brightly lighted, and my last view of it included the lick-block. One phase of a successful Indian raid was missing; there were no warriors madly dancing about the burning homes. Far up the ridge rang out the infuriated cry of a panther, and I knew it was fear of young Cousin's deadly rifle that was keeping the savages under cover. "Let me stand up and walk," I said in Shawnee. "Alive are you?" growled a white man's voice in English. "You'll be John Ward," I said as some one lifted me to my feet. "I am Red Arrow, a Shawnee. And don't you forget it." "Where are the Dales?" I asked. "Keep your mouth shut!" he ordered. They untied my hands only to fasten them behind me. They shifted the waist-cord to my neck, and then released my feet. Some one walked ahead, pulling on the cord, and I followed as best I could to escape being strangled. On each side of me walked a warrior, invisible except as when we crossed a glade where the starlight filtered down. Ward walked behind me, and warned: "Any tricks and you'll get my ax." "You were in the cabin with the dead Englishman?" He chuckled softly and boasted: