“Yes! Burnt Face speaks truly. I know, now, that it was Silverspur; but he was greatly changed. Is it not two suns since you saw him? He must, then, be not far from here. Where is he?”
Old Blaze described the spot at which he had left his friend, and Dove-eye, her eyes full of joy and eagerness, was about to hasten from him, when he detained her.
“Will not Dove-eye wait a moment?” he asked. “A few minutes will not lose Silverspur. I am a prisoner, and the warriors will kill me, unless I can escape from them.”
“Let Burnt Face wait. He has brought me good news, and I will not forget him. If the news is true, he need not fear. I must first see Silverspur.”
She sped away, lightly and gracefully as a gazelle, and the hunter gazed after her with admiring eyes.
“I kin trust that gal, sartin,” said Old Blaze, relapsing into his vernacular. “Anyhow, she will see Silverspur, and I kin allers bet on him. Ef he and that gal put thar wits together, my skulp is safe. I wish that red dog of a white man would come along, so’s I could give him a squar’ and independent talkin’-to.”
But Silas Wormley was engaged in looking after Dove-eye. He had watched her, from the shadow of a lodge, as she conversed with the captive, and he intended to follow her when she stepped away so lightly and gayly.
Dove-eye, eager as she was to greet Silverspur, whom she had so long believed to be dead, had not laid aside the caution which had become a part of her nature. Every now and then she cast stealthy glances behind and about her, to see if her movements were observed, and she soon perceived the espionage of the trader.
It was easy enough to baffle him, she thought. Her route lay toward the west, among hills and ravines. She turned toward the south, passed over the brow of a hill in full sight of the trader, and then concealed herself among some bushes in a ravine. In a few moments he came up, and passed her hastily. When she had got him fairly on the wrong track, she emerged from her concealment, and shaped her course toward the west, moving silently and swiftly.
Soon she was in the mountains, before the lodge at the foot of the cliff. She paused a moment; but that was not the place she sought. She went on, up the same ravine that she had climbed with the old medicine-man at the time of the attack by the Crows. She reached the plateau where they had concealed themselves, and there, as she stopped a moment to breathe, from the same clump of cedars in which she had once hid, a man started up before her.