and nurse poor Joe. But he could not have been in better hands.

"I should like to know something about them curious words the feller
was speaking when he keeled over," said Sneak, as he looked out at the
now quiet scene from the loophole, and mused over the events of the
night. "I begin to believe that the feller's a going to die. I don't
believe any man could talk so, if he wasn't dying."

"Have you seen any of them lately?" inquired Boone, coming to Sneak's
post and running his eye along the horizon through the loophole.

"Not a one," replied Sneak, "except that feller laying out yander by
the snowball."

"He's dead," said Boone, "and he is the only one that we are sure of
having killed to-night. But many are wounded."

"And smash me if Joe didn't kill that one when his musket went off
before he was ready," said Sneak.

"Yes, I saw him fall when Joe fired; and that accident was, after all,
a fortunate thing for us," continued Boone.

"But I'm sorry for poor Joe," said Sneak.

"Pshaw!" said Boone; "he'll be well again, in an hour."

"No, he's a gone chicken."

"Why do you think so?"

"Didn't he say so himself? and didn't he gabble out a whole parcel of
purgatory talk? He's as sure gone as a stuck pig, I tell you,"
continued Sneak.

"He will eat as hearty a breakfast to-morrow morning as ever he did in
his life," said Boone. "But let us attend to the business in hand. I
hardly think we will be annoyed any more from this quarter, unless
yonder dead Indian was a chief, and then it is more than probable they
will try to steal him away. However, you may remain here. I, alone,
can manage the others."

"Which others?" inquired Sneak.

"Those under the snow," replied Boone; "they are now within twenty
paces of the palisade."

"You don't say so?" said Sneak, cocking his gun.

"I have been listening to them cutting through the snow a long while,
and it will be a half hour yet before I spring the mine," said Boone.

"I hope it will kill 'em all!" said Sneak.

"Watch close, and perhaps _you_ will kill one yet from this loophole,"
said Boone, returning to his post, where the slow-match was exposed
through the palisade near the ground; and Roughgrove stood by, holding
a pistol, charged with powder only, in readiness to fire the train
when Boone should give the word of command.

Boone applied his ear to a crevice between the timbers near the earth,
where the snow had been cleared away. After remaining in thi