CHAPTER V.
TEMPTATION.
Unmanned, shaken to the very innermost part of his nature, and faint both from the stench of the cavern and lack of food and water, the wretched George Parsons waited the return of the Medicine until hope gave way entirely to despair.
Then a light broke in upon him; he saw the old trickster enter, take the poisonous serpents in his hands as if they had been sticks, toss them back into their dens and close the opening, drive bear and wildcat out of sight and advance toward him with a most sardonic smile.
"The pale-face has been well guarded," he said, as if his keepers had been of the most pleasant kind.
"As I never wish to be again. God only knows what I have suffered. I expected the snakes would crawl upon me and sting me to death—expected that every moment would be my last."
"And so it would have been had I not charmed them. But come."
Never did a man get more quickly out of a hateful place. So great was his anxiety to be beyond the horrors he had endured that it forced a smile from even the grim lips of the Medicine, as he led him to a wigwam, where he was treated as a welcome guest might have been.
Relieved from terror, and with his bodily wants supplied, the first thought of the renegade was for the girl, her lover and the scout. The latter he was told had fled like a coward, but swift-footed warriors had started upon the trail and it was more than probable that his scalp was even then hanging at their belts. The lover was in confinement and would die by torture, and the girl he could see at any time.