“Let the Snake tell his own lies!” she exclaimed. “Do you think the old men will listen to you, whose word no man ever believed? Begone, dog of a Pawnee! The old women at the village are waiting to whip you for failing to scrape their kettles.”
Bull-tail sneaked away, and Wormley would have followed him; but he was prevented by the chief.
“I have told the old men,” continued Dove-eye, “that this trader sought me in marriage, and that he invented this tale to destroy me, because I refused to listen to him. Dove-eye spoke truly when she said that the Big Medicine would return within six moons. He has already returned. I have seen him. If the old men and the warriors will come to the lodge at the foot of the cliff to-morrow morning, they, also, can see him, and can hear him speak.”
It lacked but this to fill the measure of Silas Wormley’s astonishment and discomfiture. He looked at Dove-eye, and her confident and triumphant air convinced him that she was in earnest, and that she knew the game she was playing.
Black Horse and the other old men received her announcement with the greatest delight. They at once returned to the village, where they caused Wormley to be placed in close confinement.
As soon as possible Dove-eye sought and obtained an interview with Old Blaze, whose case had been overlooked during the investigation of the trader’s charges. He had not been forgotten; but a strong guard had been set over him, until the council should decide his fate. Dove-eye briefly told him of her interview with Silverspur, and assured him that he need feel no uneasiness concerning his own safety. She then hastened to the lodge at the foot of the cliff, to rehearse with Silverspur the performance of the next morning.
CHAPTER X.
THE FALSE PROPHET.
It was a joyful procession that left the Arapaho village to visit the old medicine-man. It was a twelvemonth since he had shown his face to the tribe, and their anxiety to see him was most intense. The mysterious and the supernatural profoundly affect the nature of the savage, as well as of the civilized man. The Arapahoes, convinced that their prophet possessed supernatural powers of a high order, were sure that he had come laden with news from the spirit-land, all of which they were eager to hear and prepared implicitly to believe.
Dove-eye, accompanied by Black Horse, led the procession. Next came the old chiefs, the counselors of the tribe, looking as wise and solemn as the occasion demanded, and after them a large concourse of warriors, the women and children not being allowed to take part in the sacred mission.