Free tongue was given to the conversation, and the spy heard it all. Then, and without waiting for the light, he turned homeward, and scarcely a deer could have traveled more swiftly—traveled without the slightest pause for rest—burst, travel-stained, into the wigwam of his sister even while she was sleeping, and the single word he uttered was the condensation of all he had to tell. It was:
"Naudoway—see!"
CHAPTER XII.
IN THE FOREST.
The sudden fainting and falling of the wretched night-wandering Olive saved her life.
The panther had been startled by her shrill screams, miscalculated the distance, leaped over her and was instantly engaged in deadly warfare with another of its kind, that had also come upon the same errand—was stealing along like a grim ghost through the bushes, and was hurled to the earth by the one that leaped from the tree.
But the poor girl fortunately knew nothing of the savage duel—heard nothing of the snarling, tearing, ripping—the snapping of jaws—the rending of claws—the terrible howls. All that was spared her, and when she awoke to something of consciousness she crawled in an opposite direction, though wondering very much as she paused to rest in the sunshine, that streamed through the tree-tops, how her dress should have become so spotted with blood—which she believed came from human veins.
Refreshing herself from a cool spring that trickled out from the mossy interstices of a rock, she endeavored to think of what it was best to do. Of her exact locality she had no conception, but after an hour of reflection she believed she knew the course to the valley, where her lover had been walled in, and following the dictation of her heart, womanlike, rather than her reason, she determined upon the desperate task of finding and releasing him.
But how difficult the undertaking she was soon convinced—difficult and dangerous. More than once she fled in alarm from a rustling in the bushes—once she stood almost face to face with a great, gaunt timber-wolf—once she trod upon a shining, scaly serpent, whose horrid hissings rung in her ears for hours afterward, making her very flesh creep.