"The saying of my brother, the renowned of the Piegans, ring sweetly in my ear," returned the Cherokee half-breed. "What the Piegans wish, the Raven will do this night. Away goes the cloud on my brother's heart! Leaving the young paleface girl in his brother's keep, the Raven will fly. I have spoken all that is in me."
"The young paleface maiden is not here, we see only a sister of the Piegans," answered Red Knife, nobly. "She is in the shadow of the totem pole of the tribe, her head is pillowed on the ark of the Blackfeet Piegans. No danger shall befall her, though the Cherokee chief stayed away till the moon and stars fell out of the sky, and the sun burnt itself to a dead coal and dropped also into the lakes!"
An hour afterwards, at dusk, Bill Williams rode out of the camp, confidently. As we know something of the singular telegraphing and telephoning which the old trapper and his comrade employed to correspond secretly, we need not describe how again they conferred without the overhearers piercing the mystery. A little before sunrise, the Cherokee was back at the Piegan resting place. Red Knife was awake, and eagerly awaiting him at the inlet.
"What does the old father say?" queried he, after the customary greeting.
"These are the trapper's words," returned Bill, gravely. "'Am I to be deaf to the appeal of redskin brothers who are fighters and not thieves? No! When the sun is so high that there is no shadow at the base of the tree, then I shall be in the Piegan camp.'"
"Good, good!" said the sachem, cordially, "I thank my father for having swiftly and fully kept his promise. The white trapper will be welcome."
At this moment, hearing Bill Williams' voice, the door flap of Doña Rosario's tent house was pushed aside, and she came forth. Albeit she was in complete safety among the red men, her precarious position filled the dainty girl with restlessness. Throughout the night she had been kept awake by excessive nervous excitement, caused by reflections on recent events, and the pain from bruises and thorn scratches gained during the flight. In the pannier she had been shaken about more than in a cockboat in a chopping sea. She was glad to have her enfevered forehead kissed by the cool morning breeze. She came out over to the two principals, and saluted them with a grateful but still rueful smile.
Red Knife, with that innate delicate grace common to all men who live unfettered in the open air, bowed to her respectfully, and kindly asked how she rested. To encourage her, he repeated that she had nothing to fear from her enemies, as she should never fall again into their hands.
"Thank you, chief," she rejoined; "but," she added, with a brightening eye of deep proud determination, "if, in spite of your powerful protection, those ruffians had succeeded in seizing me again, they would have carried away merely the dead. I would have slain myself rather than have yielded."
With a significant gesture, she flung aside the hem of a Mexican blanket, showing the knife in her waistband.