“Let Gi-en-gwa-tah return to the chiefs,” she said; “Mahaska hears the voices of her spirits; they have promised to come to her to-night.”
The Indian rose at once, with a sudden awe settling over the gravity of his countenance; he glanced furtively about, as if almost expecting to see some trace of the supernatural beings of whom she spoke.
“In the morning Mahaska will tell her dreams to the chief,” she said; “many things have been whispered faintly to her which will now be said clearly. Gi-en-gwa-tah will follow their warning?”
“Always,” he answered; “Mahaska is the chosen of the Manitou—her words are full of wisdom.”
He went away softly, as if fearing to disturb the mysterious silence of the lodge by a footfall, and Mahaska sat there in her loneliness until the night was almost spent—communing indeed with spirits, the dark, distorted shapes which rose out of the depths of her now bloodstained soul.
When she threw herself upon her couch, it was only to pursue in sleep those bloody reflections, and if the face of the dead man, the first victim in her path, rose before her, it only brought with it a fiendish exultation at her own success, and a sterner determination to carry out her schemes, however dark the way and fierce the tempest through which they might lead her.
CHAPTER III.
THE REVELATION.
A dark plot lay buried in Mahaska’s soul, of which she had as yet given no hint even to the chiefs. She intended to forsake the alliance with the French and carry the Six Nations over to the service of the English in the war then imminent between the two powers. But the time for that action had not yet arrived, though her thoughts were constantly dwelling upon it, and after that night’s thought she rose up stronger and more determined than ever, as her hatred for the French increased from the reflections which Gi-en-gwa-tah’s words had aroused in her mind.
Before giving any clue to her scheme to the other chiefs, she wished to sound Gi-en-gwa-tah upon the subject and learn if it was possible that he could be brought to second her schemes. She knew how honorable he was, unlike the generality of his nation; in his eyes a pledge was sacred, and the very idea of breaking off the alliance with the French, unless some treachery or ill-treatment on their part gave reason for it, would have been abhorrent to him. Still, with all her wonderful knowledge of human nature, she did not thoroughly understand the chief; she could not give his savage mind credit for all the uprightness which it possessed; so utterly false was she herself that, with the usual weakness of such natures, she believed that every man could be induced to yield to a plan which he felt to be wrong if the personal temptation and reward were sufficiently strong.
Long before she left her girlish home in Quebec to dwell among the Indians, this idea of breaking off the alliance with the French had been paramount in her mind, and it was only the lack of opportunity which had prevented her already making such communications to the English Generals as would induce them to offer overtures to the tribes then comprised in the great Iroquois league known in history as the Six Nations, of whom it was now her scheme to become sole chief. She was not aware how strong a feeling of friendliness Gi-en-gwa-tah held toward the French, and she determined, even before he went away upon the war-path, to give him some idea of the plan in her mind under the promise of inviolable secrecy; well knowing that, however he might regard her design, she could trust his word; the most fearful tortures could not have wrung from him a secret which he had pledged himself to preserve.