THE
Yellow Hunter
THE WINDING TRAIL OF DEATH.
BY CAPT. CHAS. HOWARD.
AUTHOR OF
- No. 50. The Wolf Queen.
- No. 52. The Mad Chief.
- No. 60. Merciless M.
- No. 64. The Island Trapper.
- No. 65. Wolf-Cap.
NEW YORK.
BEADLE AND ADAMS, PUBLISHERS,
98 WILLIAM STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
FRANK STARR & CO.,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
THE YELLOW HUNTER;
OR,
THE WINDING TRAIL OF DEATH
CHAPTER I.
BESIEGED.
Pontiac, the Ottawa, was dead!
Yes, the fearless originator of the greatest Indian conspiracyon record had received a death-blow at the hands of afellow red-man, and the promise of a barrel of English rumhad nerved the villain’s arm.
The bloody deed was committed in the forest of the Illinois,not far from Cahokia, on the Mississippi, and when thebase-hearted Kaskaskia fled to his clansmen, with reekinghatchet, they sided with him, and, without a word in palliationof the crime, drove Pontiac’s followers from the hamlet.
The great Ottawa’s sachems spread over all the country,crying “blood for blood.” They fired many a savage heartwith the torch of vengeance, and inaugurated a war whosehorrors stand without a parallel on the pages of Americanhistory.
From the bays and rivers that relieve the vast dreary westernshore of Lake Michigan, rushed the Sacs, Foxes and Menomonies,to assist in the extirpation of the Illinois and thehated English who dwelt in the neighborhood where the conspiratorwas assassinated. Out from among the stately pinesthat cover that mighty peninsula between Huron and herwestern sister, came the intractable Ojibwa, the giant Ottawa,and the proverbially treacherous but brave Pottawatomie;and being joined on the Wabash by the Wyandots, the Miamies,and other more eastern tribes, they swooped down uponthe Eden land that bordered the Father of Waters.
Their motto was, ‘Death to the unprotected English andthe Illinois Indians, but life to every Frenchman!’
Before the war that followed, all other Indian conflictssink into utter insignificance, and over the grave of Pontiacmore blood was poured out in atonement than flowed fromthe hecatombs of slaughtered heroes on the corpse of Patroclus:
And through the dark and bloody labyrinths of that era ofdeath, the reader is about to follow the fortunes of red andwhite—fortunes which pale the cheek and almost turn theblood to ice.
“Father should have been here ere this. He said hewould return at sunset. I wonder what keeps him. Surelyno danger has befallen him. No, I know he can not be faraway, and I will run toward the creek and meet him.”
The speaker was a beautiful girl about eighteen years ofage, and, as she uttered the last word, she bounde