their feet and grasp their tomahawks.

Blunt did not move from the gate, but threw forward his rifle with a
careless motion, but an expressive glance, that caused the Indians to
resume their seats and pipes with an emphatic "Wah!" of disgust at
having been startled out of their propriety by a trifle; while Dick
Varley snatched poor Crusoe from his dangerous and painful position,
scowled angrily in the woman's face, and turning on his heel, walked
up to the house, holding the pup tenderly in his arms.

Joe Blunt gazed after his friend with a grave, solemn expression of
countenance till he disappeared; then he looked at the ground, and
shook his head.

Joe was one of the regular out-and-out backwoods hunters, both in
appearance and in fact--broad, tall, massive, lion-like; gifted with
the hunting, stalking, running, and trail-following powers of the
savage, and with a superabundance of the shooting and fighting powers,
the daring, and dash of the Anglo-Saxon. He was grave, too--seldom
smiled, and rarely laughed. His expression almost at all times was a
compound of seriousness and good-humour. With the rifle he was a good,
steady shot, but by no means a "crack" one. His ball never failed to
_hit_, but it often failed to _kill_.

After meditating a few seconds, Joe Blunt again shook his head, and
muttered to himself, "The boy's bold enough, but he's too reckless for
a hunter. There was no need for that yell, now--none at all."

Having uttered this sagacious remark, he threw his rifle into the
hollow of his left arm, turned round, and strode off with a long, slow
step towards his own cottage.

Blunt was an American by birth, but of Irish extraction, and to an
attentive ear there was a faint echo of the _brogue_ in his tone,
which seemed to have been handed down to him as a threadbare and
almost worn-out heirloom.

Poor Crusoe was singed almost naked. His wretched tail seemed little
better than a piece of wire filed off to a point, and he vented his
misery in piteous squeaks as the sympathetic Varley confided him
tenderly to the care of his mother. How Fan managed to cure him no one
can tell, but cure him she did, for, in the course of a few weeks,
Crusoe was as well and sleek and fat as ever.

CHAPTER II.

_A shooting-match and its consequences_--_New friends introduced to
the reader_--_Crusoe and his mother change masters_.

Shortly after the incident narrated in the last chapter the squatters
of the Mus