The Indian woman sat with bowed head. She knew well that the man she had loved so passionately was engaged in a desperate encounter, but though there might have been something of that former love yet lingering around her heart, the education of a lifetime rendered it a duty to restrain her feelings. It was not for a woman to take part in the strife of warriors.
Hand to hand the fight was renewed. It was a series of rapidly executed movements. To strike and guard—to advance and retreat. But few were the injuries inflicted, and when, at length, the blade of the knife was broken upon the barrel of the pistol, and that weapon fell from the hand of which it was the sole defense, they stood with only the arms that nature had given them, bloody and fatigued.
From a long-protracted struggle the Indian rose, reeling with the loss of blood, and, staggering forward, he snatched his bow from the rocky floor, restrung it with his trembling fingers, and then groped, half blindly, around until he had secured the broken knife. Enough apparently remained for his purpose, for, kneeling, he attempted to sharpen it, and a smile of terrible meaning fitted athwart his dark face, as he felt of the edge. He regained his feet, and staggered up to the fallen white man. He twined his fingers in the long hair, wet already with the damps of death, and raised his arm on high. Esther Morse turned her head away with horror. Osse ’o involuntarily raised his shield, but Waltermyer burst through all restraint, and dashed forward, exclaiming:
“By the light of heaven, you shall not scalp him! A cussed, treacherous reptyle as he was, he was yet a white man, and shall not be butchered.”
Yet, quick as Waltermyer’s movements had been, Osse ’o glided in before him, and Waupee, breaking through all bonds, followed, leaving the white girl alone.
Black Eagle heard them coming. He turned upon them, and met the man, whose intended murder lay on his soul, face to face. With a fierce cry he loosened his hold upon the Mormon, and tottered toward the verge of the cliff. Then, a true woman still, the discarded wife dashed forward to save him with an outcry of passionate despair. She was too late.
For a moment, long enough to fix his arrow on the string, he retained his footing, sent the shaft, even in his death agonies, flying through the air, and, with the death-song of the Dacotahs ringing from his lips, fell backward into the dark valley.
Waltermyer, busy in examining the body of the Mormon, to see if any thing of life remained, had not seen the action. He was intent only on the dead man before him, for the spirit had passed to its final accountability.
“Waal, waal,” he said, almost pitifully, for, with death, all his feelings changed, “I never knew any good of you, and, for a white man, you were most onacountably undesarvin’. But I reckon you must have had a soft spot in your heart, somewhar, and I’m sorry now that I didn’t kinder take care of you. It was onnatural, that’s a fact. But I saved your scalp, anyhow, and that’s some comfort. More ’an that, it shan’t be said that I left you without a grave. No, no, I’ll take good care that you don’t lie here, for the wolves to snarl over. Osse ’o, Osse ’o, I say; whar are you, man?”
Waltermyer started to his feet, in sudden terror, for the usually musical voice was changed into a hoarse whisper.