The scoundrel tendered her a low, mocking bow, and stepped aside to show my figure, as the two braves flung me at her feet. She gave but a little frighted cry, and stood facing him.
"A meeting of old friends, Mistress de Courbelles." It was the first time I had heard Ruth's name from other than the lips of Radisson. "How could I separate such dearly loved ones? See, I bring you a visitor of great value, and ere long you will have others. So I bid you good-even."
With this he bowed again and was gone. Outside came his voice giving sharp orders, and all was still. But Ruth sprang forward and was on her knees beside me.
"My poor Davie!" she cried, lifting my head in her arms. "Some water, Laughing Snow!"
From out the shadows moved the figure of a Cree woman—a sister of Uchichak's, whom the Chippewas had carried away to care for Ruth. She brought water, and the two of them bathed my wounded head, where I had been struck down from behind. As they did so, I told them all that had passed.
"It was the night after you and The Crane left for the hunt," Ruth told me, "that the Chippewas came. For a little while the old men held them off, which gave most of the women time to flee. I had just left my lodge to find the cause of the shouting when Gib's party broke through. They seized me, set fire to the lodges, and were gone again. Oh, they treated me kindly enough, Davie, but—but I cannot bear that smiling, evil face of Gib!"
"Be not afraid, sister," spoke out the Cree woman, stolidly. "The Crane is a great warrior, and his men must be very near. These Chippewa women will flee before him like leaves before the wind of autumn."
"Yes, I think that Gib's plans were all upset by Brave Heart," I tried to reassure the little maid bravely enough. "But for him, and for the Mighty One, we had never been here, Ruth. As it is, the Swift Arrow will bring Uchichak and his men."
"We have been foolish," declared Laughing Snow bitterly. She went on to tell us how, years ago, it had been rumored that men lived in the Ghost Hills. By piecing together the fragments of Radisson's tales and this of hers, Ruth and I gathered that Gib o' Clarclach had maintained a sort of robber band in these dreaded hills in the old days, when French and English were at war on the Bay. Gib had afterwards, when Radisson dwelt in England, made the journey from the Canadas with d'Iberville and his raiders, and had guided them to the English posts when the French swept them clean. The villain had served both sides, lending himself wherever the more gain promised, and the Cree woman prophesied that once these things were known in the land, her people would make a war on the Chippewas that would go down in fable long afterwards. So indeed they did, but these things came in after years and have no part in this my tale.
There was little sleep for us that night. We had all rested during the day, I high on the ridge, and Ruth in the lodge, for the trip had been a hard one. The two women told how they had come through deep gorges, like those by which we had followed the Mighty One, and how they had given up all hope of rescue.