heir descendants may still be found in
Kentucky and other western states.

Durant recovered from his hurt, and lived for some years to plot more
mischief, and fail in his designs. He at last quarreled with one of his
savage followers, and in a fit of anger, struck him a blow with his fist.
The indignity was never forgotten or forgiven. The Indian vowed to be
revenged, and he kept his oath; dogging the steps of his foe, he found an
opportunity to inflict a wound, which felled his adversary to the earth.
With proper attention he might have recovered, but his enemy left him
disabled and bound, to die by slow inches!

His wound, at first very painful, soon began to mortify, and he felt the
worms in his still living body! Vultures came to feast upon him, ere the
vital spark of existence had gone out within him, and he had not the
strength left to lift a hand, or speak a word in his own defense, though
their long beaks were stretched over him and planted in his flesh and eyes!
And when death at last came, and laid his icy fingers upon his heart, for
the final stilling of its disquiet and guilty throbbing, his failing senses
were suddenly and momentarily aroused, and the curdling blood sent again
with quickened impulse through his veins, as his dull ears were saluted
with the horrible sound of the howlings of wild beasts in the distance; and
the last things that his closing, almost sightless balls beheld were the
glaring eyes of the monsters of the forest, as they gloated over their
prey!

The sight was enough to finish the work of dissolution, already advanced
near to completion, and the sluggish blood rushed for the last time upon
his paralyzed heart with such chilling coldness and mastering power, that
it ceased to beat, and the wretch was dead!

Then a fight took place over his putrefying carcass, and the screech of
the vulture, mingled with the angry growl of the wolf, as they contended
for the remains of the man of crimes in their wild fury and ferocious
hunger!

A few hours longer, and the flesh was all torn from his frame, and only a
ghostly, grinning skeleton was left of the once proud and vicious Louis
Durant; and yet fresh beasts arriving upon the scene, disappointed in their
anticipated feast, howled a dismal requiem over his bones, which were left,
without sepulture, to bleach in the winds and storms of heaven!

Such was the terrible end of the _villain_, while the _victims_ of his hate
and malice, against w