"Then why is it not done?" questioned the voice, and its deep tones startled even the most hardy of the warriors, while the squaws fled screaming away.
"Ask of the chiefs. I—I have nothing to do with it."
"Beware! If any harm should come to him, my wrath would fall upon you as it never has done before."
There was a brief council, and then the great war-chief of the nation took command, and having heard a garbled story from the Medicine of what had transpired, and seeing nothing in it to excite particular terror, especially as the old humbug had intimated that the voice was his own work, he stepped forward, and striking his broad hand upon his breast in defiance, exclaimed:
"The great Manitou is ever the friend of the red-man, and when a pale-face dies his laughter can be heard shaking the hills. It is no good spirit that would have him go free, but an evil one that wishes harm to the Sioux."
The speech was received with applause, and those who had trembled saw in it a solution of the difficulty and became tenfold as anxious for the torture to begin. But, before the fiendish work could be commenced, the voice was heard again in contradiction:
"The words of the chief are false. His tongue is traveling a crooked trail. It is the good spirit—the friend of the nation that speaks. He would save them from lightning and tempest, the ice and snow, from famine and the black death."
"Then he can save the pale-face as well!" was the sneering reply.
"He can."
"Let him release him."