He had fixed the torch in a piece of wood which had been cut and planted for the purpose. He left the two friends to do the rest, though he showed them a hole in a corner, where there were wood, deer-meat, a jug, and some skins. Harvey and Custa quickly made a fire and cooked their supper, which having finished—in this passively imitated by Harrod—they lit their pipes and prepared for a “big talk” on the duties they had to perform—duties which did not affect them in an equal degree; for what can equal, what be like, the earnest solicitude of a passionate lover, whose mistress is in the hands of such ruthless beings as the wild savages of North America?
And Custaloga, the brave and devoted Wyandot, did love Amy with all the wild ardor of his half-tamed nature—loved her, too, without hope, without future, without an idea that his love could ever be aught save a dream—and thus, perhaps, had his affection risen to the greater hight, as it was invested with a melancholy and sadness, which to his wayward nature, but half conquered by education, was not without its charm.
Custaloga loved Amy, the affianced bride of Squire Barton, for whom he had an instinctive dislike, which, however, had never manifested itself as yet in any way save that already described. He ignored his existence.
Amy saw this and wondered.
But her secrets we are not privileged to reveal until the day and hour when she avows them herself, and deprives them of that vail of obscurity and doubt which we may not raise, even though, from the journals, notes, and letters before us, we have already mastered the mystery.
“What is Harrod up to?” whispered Harvey, as soon as he had loaded his pipe to his own satisfaction.
Custaloga looked not to the right or left, and yet his eagle eye had caught the outward character of his occupation in an instant. He was whittling.
In his hand was a long piece of pine-wood, which he was striving to bring into shape with his hunting-knife. After some labor he succeeded to his satisfaction, for he ceased and proceeded to bore a hole through one end, through which he afterward passed a thong. He then, with a grim and ghastly smile, cut one notch.
All this while the two friends, who were thinking over their plans, had watched him in silence. But as he cut the notch Harvey gave a cry of surprise and horror.
“It’s a tally, Custa. Hundred thunders!” cried he, “what a mole-eyed, one-eyed gunner I am not to have seen it afore. It’s a tally, and that notch is for the first Indian. Why that stick will hold a matter of two hundred.”