Neither of us spoke.
He, very evidently, supposed that it was my intention to make him a prisoner. In all probability, he had too much Indian pride to make any entreaty. Very possibly, he believed white blood might run in as hard veins as that of the red-skin. I led my own horse toward him.
"Will Par-a-wau mount the horse of his brother?"
Without a word of answer, he obeyed me. Then, I raised his rifle, which was still upon the ground, and placed it in his hands.
After this, I turned to the Mahala. She had been standing motionless, watching every movement which I had made. Touching her widowed brow with my parched lips, dry and smeared as they were with the grime of battle, I lifted her into the saddle of her pony, which had been standing near us, saying:
"Clo-ke-ta will sometimes think of the brother who has never forgotten her!"
As I quitted her side, I heard the same cry of anguish, which had been uttered by her, when I refused to obey her counsel and fly from the men with whom my lot was at the moment cast. My heart throbbed fiercely, yet I would not turn to her. Haply, she was thinking of the husband whom I had slain—perchance, she may momentarily have recalled the long-quelled dream of her youth. What was it to me what she was thinking of? Resolutely, I commenced my return.
In a few seconds after, I heard the tramp of the horse which had borne me, as well as that upon which I had placed Clo-ke-ta, ringing upon the plain behind me. Par-a-wau had breathed a few words to his daughter, as she passed from my hearing, in their own tongue. It almost seemed to me, as though a portion of my life had been torn from me.
Treading rapidly along the plain, I was buried in the mingled gloom of the present and the past.
Yes! This was the end. My hand had widowed the woman, for whom I had once been so sorely tempted to forswear civilization.