Calmly, but with defiant mien, the disgraced soldier awaited the onset of his new enemies. He occupied a niche to the right of the opening into the cave, with his rifle grasped firmly in his hand, his pistols and knife at his feet, ready for instant use. He had been terribly mangled by the knife and hatchet during the late desperate conflict. The skin literally hung from his cheeks in strips; his arms were lacerated from elbow to wrist; a tomahawk had laid the right temple bare; and from other but minor wounds he suffered dreadfully. He knew that his end was near; but he would perish like the wolf, and with his last breath bury his knife in the heart of a foe. Since he had grasped Effie St. Pierre’s cold hand, no sound had reached his ears from that gloomy portion of the cave, though he had listened attentively for it since the lull in the storm of human passions. The thought that the girl was dead was as sweet to his mind as wildwood honey to the Indian’s lips. She had died his, as he had sworn she should; he had outwitted his rivals at last, and Mark Morgan might press a corpse to his heart if he liked. At last Mark Morgan’s voice came to his ears. “Rudolph Runnion, enough blood has been shed, and to prevent the useless effusion of more, I call upon you to surrender.” “You might have saved your breath,” came the major’s answer, quick upon the heels of the spy’s sentence. “Parley is useless. If you want Ru’ Runnion, come and take him--dead as a stone.” “Then we will take you--dead though it be!” was Mark Morgan’s rejoinder, and scarcely a moment later a large bunch of burning brush was thrust into the mouth of the cave, by a long pole in the hands of the second scout. “We’re going to give you more smoke,” was the taunt that Kenowatha threw to the major; “we’re going to cheat you out of the shots you desire, and suffocate you as we would an obstinate bear.” An oath greeted the youth’s words, and again seizing his coat the soldier sprung from the niche and fought the thick volumes with his old vim. He succeeded in forcing the fiery brush from the cave, and it rolled to the bottom of the ravine. But, the flames had communicated with some of the unburnt undergrowth to the left of the fissure, and again the treacherous wind was driving the demon right into his stronghold. At this turn of ill-fortune the desperate man cursed the breeze; hurled his chosen anathemas into the face of his Maker, and pressed one of the pistols against his bruised temple. “Yes, yes, they shall find me dead,” he grated with fiendish triumph, as his finger touched the trigger; but, before the weapon could be discharged, a footstep toward the angle startled him, and turning he beheld, by the light of several burning boughs which had been left in the cave, a figure which he deemed the spirit of Effie St. Pierre.