I repeated this to Tawannears, and he sighed, by an effort wrenching his eyes from the maiden's face.
"Tawannears thought—— But Hanegoategeh bewitches me!"
"Have a care he does not bewitch us all to death," I muttered fiercely. "Must you, of all men, endanger our lives for idle curiosity in a woman of a strange tribe?"
"What is death, brother?" returned the Seneca mournfully. "There were times when we both prayed for it. Shall we fear it now?"
Peter bent close to me, his lips against my ear.
"She has der look of Gahano," he murmured. "Say no more. Idt is a passing fancy. He will forget."
'Twas true. In no way identical, yet there was about this girl Kachina a mystic semblance of that dead priestess of a renegade Iroquois rite, for whom Tawannears had mourned so many years, whose memory was the mainspring of our fantastic search, whose Lost Soul he insisted was awaiting him in some dim land betwixt the worlds, presided over by Ataentsic and Jouskeha, demi-gods of his heathen pantheon.
"Pardon, brother," I said gently. "I spoke unkindly. My nerves are on edge. But what shall I say to these people? They bid us come with them or stay here and be finished by the naked savages who hounded us hither. And if we go with them——"
"Go with them!" exclaimed Tawannears eagerly. "Ay, let us go!"
"Peter?"