"It is well. Let the Raven go sleep."
Left alone, the Burning Cloud pondered long and deeply upon her course. The skein was twisted, and she saw no way of unraveling it. The motives that swayed her were various, and each was strong. Love was the master passion, and if driven to extremity, she would sacrifice every thing to that. But revenge upon the renegade was burning strongly within her soul, and longed to be satisfied with blood. As for the beautiful Olive, gratitude to the physician would do very much for him, but yet she had no very strongly marked interest in her fate, save that she would keep her from torture.
The web was indeed strangely interwoven with bright and dark threads, and she knew not which way to turn to clear the meshes to her satisfaction. Had she known of the fate of the scout—as she did subsequently—all would have been plain. Now she was groping in the dark. But she had to decide quickly, and after all the time that could be possibly given to thought she took to the forest, trusting to chance.
Midnight had long since faded into the small hours, and knowing that it would require all of her exertions to reach the spot—to which she had been directed by the Little Raven—before the dawn, she ran as rapidly as her strength would permit. Her keen eyes, trained to the darkness, enabled her to find the way when another would have been at fault, and she was rapidly putting the miles behind her when she came to a little spring that bubbled forth in the center of a dense thicket, and paused to quench her thirst and obtain a little rest. But even as she did so she became aware that something was crashing along behind her and—it might be man or beast—she drew back, hoping to escape unnoticed.
Vain hope! A black figure almost instantly stopped by her side, and an angry voice hissed into her ears—a voice that she knew but too well:
"So you have come to meet your pale-face lover?"
"The trail is open and my foot is free," she replied. "Who dare stop me?"
"I dare."
"By what right?"
"Though you have refused to be my wife yet the honor of the tribe is mine, and you shall not disgrace it."