"It is well for him," continued the savage-minded squaw, "that our places are not changed. Then, indeed, he might have reason to tremble, for I would have led him such a dance of death as would have made him crawl like a serpent in the dust, and beg for death. But will you take no revenge upon him?"
"None—none!" still gasped Olive.
"At but a little distance is a wet spot, where the reeds grow tall and the grass rank. There the musketoes and buffalo-gnats and the great green-headed flies breed and swarm. Will she help the Burning Cloud to drag him thither, so that they may sting him like thousands of needles, poison his flesh, and suck his blood, and yet he can not brush them off?"
"No; no!"
"The heart of the pale-face is too soft. The child of the red-man could sit by his side and laugh to see his struggles, and sing when he groaned."
"For the love of heaven," pleaded the affrighted Olive, "let us leave him and get to a place of safety."
"Leave him!" answered the squaw, in a voice that thrilled with emotion. "Leave him? You know not what you ask. A life worth as many thousands of his as there are sands on the sea-shore may be hanging upon it. But we will not stay here. There is yet a long trail to be traveled. Get up, dog!"
She kicked the prostrate form and made him struggle to his feet—a difficult task for one so cunningly fettered. But at last it was accomplished, and she loosened the bandages so as to enable him to walk. Then she took a stout thong of buck-skin from her girdle, looped it around his neck so that it would cut into the flesh and strangle him in case of resistance, and dragged him forward, as miserable, guilty, terrified a wretch as could have been found upon the entire face of the earth.
"For God's sake," he gasped, "have a little mercy."
"Did you have any on this poor girl?" she asked.