"Not yet!" rejoined Girty, smothering his rage, as he replaced his weapon. "Not yet, Ben Younker; for you take death too easy; and by ——! I'll make it have terrors for you! But what child is this?" continued he, grasping the little girl fiercely by the arm, causing her to utter a cry of pain and fear. "By heavens! what do we with squalling children? Here, Oshasqua, I give her in your charge; and if she yelp again, brain her, by ——!" and he closed with an oath.
The Indian whom we have previously noticed as the sentinel, stepped forward, with a demoniac gleam of satisfaction on his ugly countenance, and taking the child by the hand, led her away some ten paces, where he amused himself by stripping her of such apparel as he fancied might ornament his own person; while she, poor little thing, afraid to cry aloud, could only sob forth the bitterness of her heart.
Meantime Girty turning to Ella, and finding her gradually recovering, assisted her to rise; and then motioning the chief aside, he held a short consultation with him, in the Indian dialect, regarding their next proceedings, and the disposal of the prisoners.
"Were it not, Peshewa, for his own base words," said the renegade, in reply to some remark of his Indian ally, "I would have spared him; but now," and his features exhibited a concentrated expression of infernal hate and revenge; "but now, Peshewa, he dies! with all the horrors of the stake, that you, a noble master of the art of torture, can invent and inflict. The Long Knife[6] must not curse the red man's friend in his own camp and go unpunished. I commend him to your mercy, Peshewa—ha, ha, ha!" and he ended with a hoarse, fiend-like laugh.
"Ugh!" returned Wild-cat, giving a gutteral grunt of satisfaction, although not a muscle of his rigid features moved, and, save a peculiar gleam of his dark eye, nothing to show that he felt uncommon interest in the sentence of Younker: "Peshewa a chief! The Great Spirit give him memory—the Great Spirit give him invention. He will remember what he has done to prisoners at the stake,—he can invent new tortures. But the squaw?"
"Ay, the squaw!" answered the renegade, musingly; "the old man's wife—she must be disposed of also. Ha! a thought strikes me, Peshewa: You have no wife—(the savage gave a grunt)—suppose you take her?"
Peshewa started, and his eyes flashed fire, as he said, with great energy: "Does the wolf mate with his hunter, that you ask a chief of the Great Spirit's red children to mate with their white destroyer?"
"Then do with her what you —— please," rejoined Girty, throwing in an oath. "I was only jesting, Peshewa. But come, we must be on the move! for this last job will not be long a secret; and then we shall have the Long Knives after us as hot as h——l. We must divide our party. I will take with me these last prisoners and six warriors, and you the others. A quarter of a mile below here we will separate and break our trail in the stream; you and your party by going up a piece—I and mine by going down. This will perplex them, and give us time. Make your trail conspicuous, Peshewa, and I will be careful to leave none whatever, if I can help it; for, by ——! I must be sure to escape with my prisoners. If you are close pressed, you can brain and scalp yours; but for some important reasons, I want mine to live. We will meet, my noble Peshewa, at the first bend of the Big Miama."
The Indian heard him through, without moving a muscle of his seemingly blank features, and then answered, a little haughtily:
"Kitchokema[7] plans all, and gives his red brother all the danger; but Peshewa is brave, and fears not."