he Sauk was dead.

Deerfoot looked closely at him, and then, rising to his feet, scanned
the surrounding solitude. While Hay-uta had seated himself where he
gained an unobstructed view of the sky, he was not at the top of the
ridge, nor was he liable to be discovered by any enemies at a distance.
It was a fatal mischance which brought the treacherous Pawnee that way.

From where Deerfoot stood, he could see the feet and leggings of the
fallen Pawnee, who lay flat on his back as though looking at the sky;
but no living person was in sight.

The Shawanoe waited a brief while, debating with himself as to his duty
toward his dead friend. While he was without the means of burying him,
he could place the body in some less conspicuous position, yet he took a
different course.

Before the limbs of the dead warrior were given time to stiffen,
Deerfoot adjusted them as they were when he first discovered him sunk in
meditation. The body was made to sit erect, the back supported by the
rock behind it; the feet were extended in a natural position, and the
arms folded across the massive chest. The partly-open eyes seemed still
to rest on the western horizon, behind which the sun had set. Though
Indian superstition would have caused the body to face the other way, to
greet the rising sun, Deerfoot had no wish to change the posture; for
Hay-uta died not as dies the heathen, but as passes away the Christian.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF HAY-UTA.]

It would have been hard for any one venturing from the woods, and
catching sight of the body for the first time, to believe the spark of
life had fled.

The Shawanoe viewed the striking figure, and felt that he had done the
most fitting thing. Looking up at the darkened sky he asked the Great
Spirit to protect the body from molestation by wild man or beast, and
then, with a faint sigh, he turned away, and passing over the ridge,
hastened toward the rendezvous, where Jack Carleton and Otto Relstaub
had been told to await his coming.

Months afterward, a party of trappers penetrating further than usual to
the westward, came upon the skeleton of an Indian warrior, seated on the
ground with his arms folded, and back resting against a rock behind him.
They supposed he had been killed and then placed in that posture, but we
know they were not altogether right in their belief.

Having turned his back for the last time on Hay-uta, the Shawanoe
hurried toward the ridge where he expected to re