Yes; there lay the great Comanche chieftain, Swico-Cheque, sunk into a heavy slumber—deep and profound—and yet of that character which would have required but the slightest noise to awake.
Lightning Jo paused in his creeping, stealthy movement, and stared at the savage, his own eyes gleaming with an exultation as ferocious as would have been that of the red-skin himself, had their relative positions been changed. The murderous and outrageous crimes of which this fiend had been guilty, his relentless war upon unoffending whites, his scores of murders of weak, defenseless women, and even the nursing babe, had placed him outside the pale of human mercy, and there was not a settler or soldier in the South-west who knew of his revolting character that did not feel that he deserved to be strangled to death, or put out of the way by any means that happened to present itself.
He had on, this moment, the very hunting-shirt to which reference has been made, fringed around with a broad band of human hair, from the long, dark, flowing tresses of the innocent virgin, to the light, silvery locks of prattling childhood. And his seamed face, daubed and smirched with paint, had the horrid look of that of some sleeping gorilla that had been feasting upon its human meal.
And yet in this moment of triumph, when Jo felt that he had him at last, there came a strange feeling to the scout, which can be understood, perhaps, by his whispered exclamations to himself.
“Confound it! it will look as if I was afeard of him, when I shouldn’t like any thing better than to have a fair stand-up fight. He might keep all the knives he wanted, and I would use nothing but my fists. How I should like to play some trick upon the infernal skunk!”
Ay! at this very time, when he had every thing to make him serious and thoughtful, there came a strange reaction over Jo, and an irresistible desire to play one of his practical jokes upon the Comanche. He concluded to wake him up to witness his own demise—but to arouse him in an original fashion.
It was a delicate task; but with that skill for which the scout was noted, he drew out his flask and poured out a stream of powder, moving the flask along from a point on the ground directly beside the Comanche’s ear, for several feet away—the particles all being united, so that the connection was perfect. Then, when every thing was safe, Jo drew a lucifer from the little safe he always carried about him, and struck it upon the bottom of his foot. As it ignited he held the blaze close to the black grains, and then spoke:
“Swico, my own loved cherub—”
This was enough; these words were barely uttered, when his snaky eyes opened, just in time to see a serpentine line of fire rushing toward him, and going off in a big puff directly under his ear, in a way that scorched his face and caused him to leap to his feet, with a howl, followed by an instant rush out from among the trees. He had caught a glimpse of his old enemy through the whizzing, and he was gone like a shot.
This was unexpected by Jo, who had hoped that he would maintain his ground, and the two would have fought out their fight on the spot. He did not anticipate any such flight as this, which was made so suddenly that he had no time to interfere ere he was gone.