O'Flynn were the last. They had been together a little
distant from the others. Now and again they had heard the report of
firearms, multiplied into something like a volley.

"Listen at them spalpeens wastin' powdher," the corporal exclaimed once,
wroth at this unsoldierly practice. "Must they have twenty thrys to hit
a big black buffalo? Just lemme git 'em into the gyard house wunst
agin--time they git out they'll be fit to worship the outside o' the
dure; it'll look so strange an' good to 'm."

It was a wolf-trap which he was exploiting at the moment, made of logs
cumbrously adjusted and baited with buffalo meat, and within it now were
two large, handsome specimens whose skins were of value, and who had
evidently resolved to part with those ornamental integuments as
reluctantly as might be; they were growling and plunging at the timbers
with a most ferocious show of fangs and the foam flying from their
snarling jaws.

The sun sifted down through the great trees and the soft green shadows
on the man and boy, both clad in the hunter's buckskin shirt and
leggings. Corporal O'Flynn had knelt down outside the pen the better to
see in the shadow the two plunging wild beasts.

"I'm afeared to shoot so close lest I might singe yer hair, but I can't
stand on ceremony, me dears," he said, addressing the wolves, as he drew
his pistol. "Bedad, I _must_ go and stop that wastin' o' powdher!"

The next moment something suddenly sang aloud in the wilderness--a wild,
strange, sibilant strain. It seemed materialized as it whizzed past
Hamish's ear, and so long had it been since he had heard the flight of
the almost discarded arrow that he did not recognize the sound till he
heard a sharp exclamation of pain and saw the shaft sticking in
O'Flynn's right arm, pinning it to the logs of the wolf-trap. The claws
of the wild beasts, reaching through, tore now the buckskin and now the
flesh from his chest, as he pluckily struggled to free himself; the
pistol went off in his grasp and one of the wolves fell in convulsive
agonies; the other, dismayed, shrank back. Hamish caught up O'Flynn's
loaded gun, looking about warily for Indians, and prudently reserving
his fire. He saw naught, and the next moment he realized that O'Flynn
was fainting from the pain. He knew that the straggler who had shot the
arrow had sped swiftly away to summon other Cherokees, or to secure a
gun or more arrows. He risked his life in waiting only a moment, but
wit