This was quickly settled upon, and a few minutes later James Morris moved onward, on horseback, with his gun ready for use, should the enemy put in an appearance. CHAPTER XVIII AFTER THE ENCOUNTER Less than an hour after leaving his nephew and Jadwin, James Morris reached the spot where the fearful encounter of the evening before had occurred. The spectacle was one to make the heart of any onlooker turn sick, and a shudder passed through the frame of the trader as he gazed at the scene of desolation before him. Close to the burnt-out camp-fire rested the form of Barnaby Cass, a well-known resident of Winchester, who had followed Barringford to the Ohio district in an endeavor to better his fortunes, A bullet had passed through his heart, and he must have died ere his body struck the ground. A dozen paces away lay the corpse of the other white man, Oliver Lampton, well known through western Pennsylvania as the Trapper Preacher, because about half of his time was spent in hunting and trapping, and the remainder in preaching temperance to the whites and red men who indulged in liquor to excess. Beside Lampton lay one of the pack-horses, also dead, and another pack-horse lay a little further off, suffering greatly from two broken legs. To put this animal out of its misery James Morris fired a shot into its brain. Great confusion was on all sides, for many of the packs had been broken open and rifled of their most valuable contents. About half of the stuff had been left behind, principally the goods of the greatest weight. Much that was breakable had been broken, and some valuable blankets that could not be carried off had been slashed and cut with keen knives, in a hasty endeavor to ruin them. "The rascals!" muttered the trader. "If only we can get on their trail they shall pay dearly for their bloody work here." Having surveyed the camp, he moved around among the trees and brushwood in the vicinity. He soon found the body of an Indian who had belonged to the pack-train party, and then another Indian who looked to be an enemy. The latter had his face painted in peculiar wavy streaks which the trader had seen twice before. "The Wanderers!" he muttered. "I half suspected it might be so. This is the work of that rascal Flat Nose--and if that is so, he is moving northward with all speed to get away with his booty. More than likely some French hunters--ha!" He broke off short, for in the undergrowth he had caught sight of another form, that of a white man leaning against a fallen tree, with a gun clutched tightly in his stiffened hands. "Baptiste Masson!" he muttered, naming a rough French hunter and trapper who, in years gone by, had worked for Jean Bevoir. "As I thought. It was a plot between the Wanderers and the French! They mean to drive me from the Ohio if they possibly can. Masson, eh? Can it be that Jean Bevoir, and Valette, and Bergerac were in it, too? More than likely."