When the dance had subsided, the Council resumed its deliberations.
It was arranged that there should be a hunt that afternoon and the foxes or coyotes should be driven as near as possible to the settlements. This would be a means of reconnoitering and it would make the whites think the Indians were engaged in peaceful pursuits.
Pauline, after her first startled cry, stood spellbound by the two glowing eyes that shone from the far end of the cave.
There was no light now—save for the eyes. The rift in the roof from which the mysterious glow had come seemed to have been closed suddenly. The pitch darkness made the eyes doubly terrible, and just perceptibly they moved and flashed which showed they were living eyes.
Pauline longed to scream, but could not. Behind those fiery points imagination could picture all manner of horrible shapes. Was the creature about to spring upon her?
The eyes vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.
The low rustling sound came again; then the utter silence.
Pauline, freed of the uncanny gaze, was able to think and act. If that animal could find its way into her prison house, there must be another entrance to the cave.
It was plain that the animal had been crouching on the slant rock above the ledge. Pauline began again to grope around the wall. She could touch the top of the ledge and now in several places she found small crevices in the wall by which she tried to climb.
Time and again she fell back. Her soft hands were torn by the jagged rock; her dress was in shreds; her golden hair fell down upon her shoulders. She might have been some preternatural dweller of the place.