"An' they've taken his scalp." Three times Haward made the round of the yet burning heap.

Was it only ruined and fallen walls, or was it a funeral pyre as well?
To know, he must wait for the day and until the fire had burned itself out.

If the former were the case, if the dead man alone kept the valley, then now, through the forest and the moonlight, captives were being haled to some Indian village, and to a fate more terrible than that of the man who lay there upon the grass with an arrow through his heart.
If the girl were still alive, yet was she dead to him.

He was no Quixote to tilt with windmills.

Had a way to rescue her lain fair before him, he would have risked his life without a thought.