While going over his version of the attack, Jonathan followed Brandt’s trail, as had Wetzel, to where it ended in the river. The old borderman had continued on down stream along the sandy shore. The outlaw remained in the water to hide his trail.
At one point Wetzel turned north. This move puzzled Jonathan, as did also the peculiar tracks. It was more perplexing because not far below Zane discovered where the fugitive had left the water to get around a ledge of rock.
The trail was approaching Fort Henry. Jonathan kept on down the river until arriving at the head of the island which lay opposite the settlement. Still no traces of Wetzel! Here Zane lost Brandt’s trail completely. He waded the first channel, which was shallow and narrow, and hurried across the island. Walking out upon a sand-bar he signaled with his well-known Indian cry. Almost immediately came an answering shout.
While waiting he glanced at the sand, and there, pointing straight toward the fort, he found Brandt’s straggling trail!
CHAPTER XXIV
Colonel Zane paced to and fro on the porch. His genial smile had not returned; he was grave and somber. Information had just reached him that Jonathan had hailed from the island, and that one of the settlers had started across the river in a boat.
Betty came out accompanied by Mrs. Zane.
“What’s this I hear?” asked Betty, flashing an anxious glance toward the river. “Has Jack really come in?”
“Yes,” replied the colonel, pointing to a throng of men on the river bank.
“Now there’ll be trouble,” said Mrs. Zane nervously. “I wish with all my heart Brandt had not thrown himself, as he called it, on your mercy.”
“So do I,” declared Colonel Zane.
“What will be done?” she asked. “There! that’s Jack! Silas has hold of his arm.”
“He’s lame. He has been hurt,” replied her husband.
A little procession of men and boys followed the borderman from the river, and from the cabins appeared the settlers and their wives. But there was no excitement except among the children. The crowd filed into the colonel’s yard behind Jonathan and Silas.
Colonel Zane silently greeted his brother with an iron grip of the hand which was more expressive than words. No unusual sight was it to see the borderman wet, ragged, bloody, worn with long marches, hollow-eyed and gloomy; yet he had never before presented such an appearance at Fort Henry. Betty ran forward, and, though she clasped his arm, shrank back. There was that in the borderman’s presence to cause fear.
“Wetzel?” Jonathan cried sharply.
The colonel raised both hands, palms open, and returned his brother’s keen glance. Then he spoke. “Lew hasn’t come in. He chased Brandt across the river. That’s all I know.”
“Brandt’s here, then?” hissed the borderman.
The colonel nodded gloomily.
“Where?”
“In the long room over the fort. I locked him in there.”
“Why did he come here?”
Colonel Zane shrugged his shoulders. “It’s beyond me. He said he’d rather place himself in my hands than be run down by Wetzel or you. He didn’t crawl; I’ll say that for him. He just said, ‘I’m your prisoner.’ He’s in pretty bad shape; barked over the temple, lame in one foot, cut under the arm, starved and worn out.”
“Take me to him,” said the borderman, and he threw his rifle on a bench.
“Very well. Come along,” replied the colonel. He frowned at those following them. “Here, you women, clear out!” But they did not obey him.
It was a sober-faced group that marched in through the big stockade gate, under the huge, bulging front of the fort, and up the rough stairway. Colonel Zane removed a heavy bar from before a door, and thrust it open with his foot. The long guardroom brilliantly lighted by sunshine coming through the portholes, was empty save for a ragged man lying on a bench.
The noise aroused him; he sat up, and then slowly labored to his feet. It was the same flaring, wild-eyed Brandt, only fiercer and more haggard. He wore a bloody bandage round his head. When he saw the borderman he backed, with involuntary, instinctive action, against the wall, yet showed no fear.
In the dark glance Jonathan shot at Brandt shone a pitiless implacability; no scorn, nor hate, nor passion, but something which, had it not been so terrible, might have been justice.
“I think Wetzel was hurt in the fight with Legget,” said Jonathan deliberately, “an’ ask if you know?”
“I believe he was,” replied Brandt readily. “I was asleep when he jumped us, and was awakened by the Indian’s yell. Wetzel must have taken a snap shot at me as I was getting up, which accounts, probably, for my being alive. I fell, but did not lose consciousness. I heard Wetzel and Legget fighting, and at last struggled to my feet. Although dizzy and bewildered, I could see to shoot; but missed. For a long time, it seemed to me, I watched that terrible fight, and then ran, finally reaching the river, where I recovered somewhat.”
“Did you see Wetzel again?”
“Once, about a quarter of a mile behind me. He was staggering along on my trail.”
At this juncture there was a commotion among the settlers crowding behind Colonel Zane and Jonathan, and Helen Sheppard appeared, white, with her big eyes strangely dilated.
“Oh!” she cried breathlessly, clasping both hands around Jonathan’s arm. “I’m not too late? You’re not going to—”
“Helen, this is no place for you,” said Colonel Zane sternly. “This is business for men. You must not interfere.”
Helen gazed at him, at Brandt, and then up at the borderman. She did not loose his arm.
“Outside someone told me you intended to shoot him. Is it true?”
Colonel Zane evaded the searching gaze of those strained, brilliant eyes. Nor did he answer.
As Helen stepped slowly back a hush fell upon the crowd. The whispering, the nervous coughing, and shuffling of feet, ceased.
In those around her Helen saw the spirit of the border. Colonel Zane and Silas wore the same look, cold, hard, almost brutal. The women were strangely grave. Nellie Douns’ sweet face seemed changed; there was pity, even suffering on it, but no relenting. Even Betty’s face, always so warm, piquant, and wholesome, had taken on a shade of doubt, of gloom, of something almost sullen, which blighted its dark beauty. What hurt Helen most cruelly was the borderman’s glittering eyes.
She fought against a shuddering weakness which threatened to overcome her.
“Whose prisoner is Brandt?” she asked of Colonel Zane.
“He gave himself up to me, naturally, as I am in authority here,” replied the colonel. “But that signifies little. I can do no less than abide by Jonathan’s decree, which, after all, is the decree of the border.”
“And that is?”
“Death to outlaws and renegades.”
“But cannot you spare him?” implored Helen. “I know he is a bad man; but he might become a better one. It seems like murder to me. To kill him in cold blood, wounded, suffering as he is, when he claimed your mercy. Oh! it is dreadful!”
The usually kind-hearted colonel, soft as wax in the hands of a girl, was now colder and harder than flint.
“It is useless,” he replied curtly. “I am sorry for you. We