“Deil take me,” snorted Maclish, “but yon man spoke French! From the south, belike.”
“Of course,” said Crawford quietly. “Frontin, wait here with the muskets. It’s no trap, but we’ll not take chances.” He passed his musket to Frontin. “Coming with me, Maclish?”
“Oh, ay.”
Crawford resumed his course, Maclish at his elbow. Between these two men had passed few words since the previous day. Hatred lay between them, and fear. Maclish was a subtle and a canny man, but he could not fathom the stern silence and self-control of Crawford. Nor had the latter missed certain indications which warned him that Maclish was even now carrying on some treacherous game. The Stone Men had sent up lengthy smoke-signals which he could not read, and messengers had departed. It was tacitly understood that after meeting the Dacotah envoys, the quarrel between the two men would be settled—Maclish doubtless counting on murdering both Frontin and Crawford.
Now, gaining the shore ice, Crawford passed in among the hummocks, gained the rocks beyond, and mounted them. He heard Maclish coming to his side, and then jumped down. It was a hideous scene which greeted the two men, a scene which could not fail to give the impression intended.
Here was a hollow among the rocks, and in the centre of it a blackened space of old fires showing that the Dacotah envoys had been camped here for some little time. In the centre of this blackened area now blazed a fire of a few dry sticks—a very tiny fire, without smoke or heat, serving only to keep the red spark of life in being. Across from this fire sat in grave silence the man who had summoned them, his face streaked with white and vermilion under the horned bison robe; with him was a second man who wore the head and pelt of a grey timber wolf in similar fashion. Both of them regarded Crawford and Maclish with steady scrutiny—but the two white men were staring hard at the lifeless things behind the two Dacotah.
These had been men, all six of them. Two Sauteurs, three Crees, and the Assiniboine chief of Maclish’s party; they were dead, sitting in frozen silence as though watching the council fire, cunningly placed soon after death so that their rigid bodies assumed the sitting posture naturally. They had not been scalped. Only the horrible fixedness of eye and sinew betrayed their condition. A cry of fury broke from Maclish at sight of the chieftain.
“I’ll have your scalps for this, ye rogues!”
“My brothers are welcome,” said the bison-chief in French. “We do not understand the strange talk that is like the crackling of dried leaves.”
“You’ll understand it soon enough,” retorted Maclish, in groping and barbarous French, and added an oath. “You’ve murdered the chief!”