The Pathfinder

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Judith offers marriage to Deerslayer, who, bound to filial loyalties and without romantic love for her, courteously refuses and she withdraws heartbroken.
Deerslayer becomes the famed Hawkeye; fifteen years later he revisits Glimmerglass to find the settlement and castle ruined and a ribbon of Judith’s among the debris.
Judith’s subsequent fate is unknown and forgotten, the narrator noting that vice and time consign such lives to oblivion.

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A coordinated assault routs the Hurons but in the pursuit Magua leads Cora into the caves and up the mountain, where she is murdered and Uncas is fatally stabbed by Le Subtil; Magua then falls to his death after Hawkeye shoots him from the precipice.
The Lenape perform solemn funerals for Cora and Uncas; Munro, Heyward and David depart in mourning, while Chingachgook and Hawkeye, joined in grief, reflect on their people's decline.

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Mabel, besieged in the blockhouse after an ambush, signals Chingachgook and is joined by Pathfinder, who helps bring in the wounded Sergeant Dunham and stoutly defends the post. The Quartermaster Muir’s treachery is exposed and he is killed, Jasper’s cutter (the Scud) arrives to scatter the assailants and effect a negotiated evacuation. Dunham dies; Mabel marries Jasper, while the selfless Pathfinder, who loved her, relinquishes his claim and disappears into the wilderness.

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Natty Bumppo is tried, sentenced to the stocks and jail for threatening a constable, and shortly thereafter escapes custody with aid from Benjamin Penguillium and Oliver Edwards.
A sudden wildfire on the Vision provokes dramatic rescues: Natty and Edwards save Elizabeth, the Delaware chief Mohegan dies, and communal loyalties and enmities are exposed.
The cave reveals Major Effingham as Oliver's grandfather, prompting reconciliations and Oliver's marriage to Elizabeth, while Natty departs again for the western wilderness.

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White captives liberated by an old trapper are seized by the squatter Ishmael Bush, who convenes an ad hoc tribunal to adjudicate property, marriage claims, and guilt.
A major engagement between Pawnees and Tetons follows: the Pawnees, led by Hard‑Heart and reinforced by Ishmael’s rifle volley, win after the death of the Teton chief Mahtoree.
Afterward Ishmael executes his nephew Abiram for the murder of his son, the trapper dies and is honorably buried by the Pawnees, and Middleton, Paul, and others return to settled life with restored order.