But yet she lingered for a long time. She, both of them were learning for the first time what bliss there was in loving, and it was not until after the squaw had soothed her white lover into real slumber that she turned her reluctant feet home. But once having started her speed almost rivaled that of a deer.
Yet broken would have been her slumbers and her dreams far other than the heaven of lovers, could she have been aware that the moment after she had started, a dark, painted form crept out from the concealment of the bushes, where every word must have been audible to him, and took her place by the side of the sleeper.
It was the young brave who had sought to gain her love!
But his face told of another and far more deadly passion now, and more than once his knife was raised to find a bloody sheath. Yet he refrained from striking. His subtly-working brain was devising a far more terrible vengeance—one that would strike terror into the heart of the Burning Cloud as well. And yet the leaving of a scalp so easily to be obtained, and one that would bring him so much of renown, was hard for his nature—the most severe trial of his life thus far.
But might it not be that he could force the squaw to become his wife—or at least bribe her to do so—the bribe being her lover's life?
It was as he conceived a brilliant idea, and drawing back without staining his soul or his hands with murder, he left the sleeper to his rest, and followed the girl to the wigwam—saw her—related what he had seen, and attempted to carry out his plans.
But she laughed at him and his threats, and when he told the story to the warriors, dared him to the proof.
"The morning will decide," he said, sullenly.
And decide it did. The warriors and the spy and the girl went to the spot he designated, and found nothing of any such place of concealment as he had described, but a torrent foaming through the rocky gorge that bore no impress of ever having been in another place since creation!