"Yes; you are, perhaps, right," Natah Otann said; "but I feel I cannot stain my hands with that woman's blood."
"Scruples, poor child," White Buffalo said, with disdain; "well, I do not insist; but be assured that scruples will ruin you. The man who wishes to govern others must be made of marble, and have no feelings of humanity, else his prospects will be nipped in the bud, and his foes will ridicule him. That which has ever ruined the greatest geniuses is, that they would not comprehend this fact; but worked for their successors and not for themselves."
In speaking thus, the old man had involuntarily let himself be carried away by the tumultuous feelings that still agitated his mind. His eye sparkled; his brow was unwrinkled; his glance had an irresistible majesty; he had returned, in thought, to his old days of struggling and triumph. Natah Otann listened to him, yielding to the dominating ascendency of this prostrated giant, who was so great even after his fall.
"What am I saying? I am mad! pardon me, child," the old man continued, sinking in his chair despondingly. "Go, leave me; tomorrow, at sunrise, I may, perhaps, have some news for you."
And he dismissed the Chief with a sign. The latter, accustomed to these outbursts, bowed, and departed.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
THE SPY.
The pistol shot fired by the White Buffalo had not quite produced the result the latter expected from it. The man was wounded; but the haste with which the chief had been obliged to fire, injured the precision of his aim, and the listener escaped with a slight wound; the bullet grazed his skull, and only produced a copious hemorrhage. Still this hurt had been enough for the spy, who saw that he was unmasked, and that a longer stay at the spot would inevitably produce a catastrophe; hence he ran off at full speed. After running for several minutes, feeling certain that he had thrown off any persons inclined to follow him, he stopped to draw breath, and attend to his wound, which still bled profusely. In consequence, he looked anxiously around him; but all was silent and solitary. A dense snowstorm, which had been falling for many an hour, had compelled the Indians to seek shelter in their lodges The firing of the pistol had caused no panic, for the Redskins, accustomed to nocturnal disputes in their villages, had not stirred. No other noise could be heard but the barking of a few straying dogs, and the hoarse cries of the wild beasts that wandered over the prairie in search of prey. The spy, reassured by the calm prevailing in the village, set about bandaging the wound, in his heart thanking the snow for falling, as it effaced the traces of blood left in his flight.
"Come," he muttered, in a low voice, "I shall know nothing this night; the genius of evil protects those men; I will go into the cabin."