He turned a parting glance around, and prepared to start; but, at the same moment, a white shadow, gliding over the snow like a phantom, passed a short distance from him.
"What is that?" the Indian muttered, suddenly assailed by a superstitious terror. "Is the 'Virgin of the dark hours' wandering about the village? What terrible misfortune is menacing us then?"
The Indian bent forward, and, as if attracted by a superior power, followed with his eyes the strange apparition, whose white outline was already blending with the distant gloom.
"That creature is not walking," he said to himself, with terror; "she leaves no footfall on the snow. Is she a Genius hostile to the Blackfeet? There is a mystery about this which I must fathom."
The instinct of the spy heightening the curiosity of the Indian, the latter soon forgot his terror for a moment, and rushed boldly in pursuit of the phantom. After an interval of a few minutes, the shadow or spectre stopped, and looked around with evident indecision. The Indian, lest he might be discovered, had just time to hide himself behind the wall of a cabin; but a pale gleam of moonlight, emerging between two clouds, had, for a second, lighted up the face of the person he was pursuing.
"Prairie-Flower!" he muttered, suppressing with difficulty a cry of surprise.
In fact, that was the person thus wandering about in the darkness. After some hesitation, the maiden raised her head, and walked resolutely toward a cabin, the buffalo skin of which she lifted with a firm hand. She entered, and let the curtain fall behind her. The Indian bounded up to the cabin, walked round it, thrust his knife up to the hilt in the wall, turned it round twice or thrice, to enlarge the hole, and, placing his ear to it, listened. The most complete quiet continued to prevail in the village.
At the first step the young girl took in the lodge, a shadow suddenly rose before her, and a hand fell upon her shoulder; instinctively she recoiled.
"What do you want?" a menacing voice asked. This question was asked in French, which rendered it doubly unintelligible by the Indian girl.
"Answer! or I'll blow out your brains," the voice continued.