Their words, too, were kind and friendly; and she gathered from them that Otaitsa, in order to veil the real object of her coming, had been making inquiries as to whether any one had seen Walter Prevost. They assured Edith that they had not seen him--that he could not have come into the Oneida country, or some one in the Castle must have heard of him. A pale-face amongst them was very rare, they said; but the coming of Walter Prevost, whom so many knew and loved much, would have been noised abroad immediately. They said that his absence from his home was certainly strange, but added, laughing, that young warriors would wander, as Edith would discover when she was old enough.
Thus they sat and talked with her, lighting a lamp in a bowl, till Otaitsa returned; and then they left the two friends alone together.
Otaitsa was agitated evidently, though she tried hard to hide, if not to suppress, her emotions under Indian calmness; but her agitation was evidently joyful. She laid her small hand upon Edith's, and pressed it warmly.
"I have found friends," she said; "those who will work for me, and with me: my father's sister, who knew and loved my mother, and who is supposed by some to have a charm from the Great Spirit to make men love and reverence her--the wife of the Sachem of the Bear--the young bride of the Running Deer--the wife of the Grey Wolf--the wife of Lynxfoot--and many others. All these have vowed to help me, whatever it may cost. They all know Walter: they all have called him brother; and they all are resolute that their brother shall not die. But I must first work for him myself, dear Edith," she continued. Then, clasping her hands together with a burst of joy at the hope lighted up in her young, warm heart, she exclaimed--"Oh, that I could save him all by myself!--that I might buy him from his bonds by my own acts alone--ay, or even by my own blood! Huagh! Huagh! that were joyful indeed!"
Edith could hardly raise her mind to the same pitch of hope; still, she felt more satisfied--her object was accomplished. Otaitsa was informed of Walter's danger; and the bright, enthusiastic girl was already actively engaged in the effort to deliver him. There was something, too, in the young Indian--an eagerness, an energy, unusual in the depressed women of her race, and probably encouraged by the fond, unbounded indulgence of the chief her father--which seemed to breathe of hope and success; and it was impossible to look into her eager and kindling eyes, when the fancy that she could deliver her young lover all alone took possession of her, without believing that, if his deliverance was within human power, she would accomplish it.
Edith felt that her duty so far was done, and that her next duty was towards her father, who she well knew would be painfully anxious till she returned, however confident he might have felt of her safety in the hands of the Indians, so long as there seemed no immediate chance of her being placed in such a situation. She willingly, therefore, agreed to Otaitsa's suggestion, to set out with the first ray of light on the following morning, Otaitsa promising that some Indian women should accompany her a day's journey on the way, who, by their better knowledge of the country, and their skill in the management of the canoe, would greatly facilitate her progress.
About an hour was spent in conversation, all turning upon one subject, and then the two girls lay down to sleep in each other's arms.
[CHAPTER XXV.]
On the very same night which was passed by Edith Prevost in the great lodge of the Black Eagle, eight or ten wild-looking savages, if they could so be called, assembled apparently to deliberate upon some great and important question. The place they took for their meeting lay nearly twenty miles in a direct line from the Oneida lake, and was, even in the daylight, a scene of no inconsiderable beauty and grandeur.
At the hour of their meeting, however, which was about forty minutes after the sun went down, the surrounding objects were illuminated by a different and a more appropriate light. Their council-fire had been kindled on the top of a large flat mass of stone, in a very narrow dell or pass which separated a rugged and forest-bearing mountain from a spur of the same range, that seemed to have been riven from the parent chain by some rude and terrible convulsion of nature. Forty yards, at the widest part, was the expanse of this deep fissure; and on either side were huge masses of rock tumbled about in chaotic confusion, and blocking up the greater part of the bottom of the dell. From behind these rose the riven cliffs, rough and serrated, like the edges of two saws, the teeth of which would fit into each other if pressed together. But upon all the salient points, even where it seemed impossible for a handful of vegetable mould to rest, a tall tree had perched itself, spreading out its branches almost till they met those on the opposite side of the glen, through which no torrent rushed, neither had any spring burst forth when the earthquake rent the solid foundations of the mountain; but a dry, short turf covered all the earth accumulated below.