“She’s mine!” yelled James, throwing himself before his mad brother. “Simon, that girl is mine! Touch her upon your peril!” The command was disregarded with an oath, and the enraged Simon threw his brother from him, and continued his vengeful bounds toward the prison lodge. Jim Girty was soon on his feet, and his first action was to snatch a rifle from the nearest brave, and level it at his brother! “Die! Simon Girty!” he hissed, as his sight flitted along the glistening barrel. Instantly a sharp report rent the morning air, and, with a shriek, Simon Girty dropped his rifle, and fell forward to the earth, where he lay motionless. CHAPTER XIX. A CHANGE IN AFFAIRS. Jim Girty neither felt nor expressed contrition for his fratricidal deed. With folded arms he gazed calmly, almost triumphantly, upon his fallen brother, whom he believed dead--pierced through the head by his ball. “I’ll teach you, Simon Girty, how to disobey me!” he at length hissed, in the silence that reigned after the commission of the dark crime. “You are my brother, but I care not for that, though I know that for this act I must fly the Shawnee nation before Tecumseh comes back. Ha! by heavens! did he move?” He thought he detected a movement indicative of returning life in his brother Simon, and, throwing his rifle above his head, he strode forward with the intention of completing the deed of blood. But the movement--the convulsive action of Simon’s arm--had been noticed by the savages, and several sprung to his side far in advance of his impetuous brother. The foremost Shawnee, a chief of no mean distinction, jerked the renegade to his feet, and the eyelids parted, to display eyes wandering, like lost comets, in their gory sockets. With clubbed rifle, Jim Girty reached the spot to be hurled to the earth by an Indian, and a moment later he found himself being swiftly borne to the prison lodge, his limbs bound with deer-sinews. He knew that Simon’s heart, like his own, possessed no brotherly feeling, and that when the painted renegade came to his senses, he would wreak his vengeance upon his own lovely captive and himself. On the damp floor of the prison-house Jim Girty found bitter food for reflection, and, with fate against him, he plotted not only his own escape, but the freedom of Eudora Morriston. He possessed many friends in the Shawnee nation; but not so numerous an array as his brother boasted of. For a long time the brothers had vacillated between friendship and strife, and James possessed secret friends who seemed to be active partisans of Simon. His brother was never beyond the vision of his red spies; and what James lacked in strength he gained in cunning. When he heard his guard leave the prison house, he rolled himself to the door, and applied his lips to the crevice between the portal and sill. “Who guards the White Wolf?” he asked in a low tone. “Giangomah, the Black Whirlwind.”