“Gentle Maiden!” He spoke the name in an undertone, which showed both his surprise and his friendly feeling for the one addressed.
“I heard the hoofs of your horse,” said the Indian girl, drawing stealthily nearer and in the same manner looking all about her. “My Paleface brother’s friend—he is not here.” Her words seemed to put a question she feared to more directly ask, and Kingdom realized at once, if he had ever doubted before, that the warning from Fishing Bird was not without most serious reason.
While the young white man hesitated to speak, not knowing just how much he dared let the daughter of Captain Pipe understand that he knew, she continued:
“My Paleface brother is in danger. Big Buffalo was found dead and Lone-Elk, the stranger from afar, has said a witch has done it—killed Big Buffalo with a witch’s hatchet that leaves no mark. Lone-Elk says the witch is Little Paleface, the friend of my brother here,—says he saw Little Paleface, bewitched, strike the Delaware down. Even now have Lone-Elk and some others gone to seize him.”
“And Captain Pipe, your father—does Captain Pipe let them do this?” Ree asked, trying to remain calm.
“The custom is that the witch must die,” the girl made answer, turning her eyes away.
“Gentle Maiden, you know that John Jerome—you know that Little Paleface is no witch; that he no more killed Big Buffalo than you did.” Kingdom’s voice was half angry in its impatient earnestness.
“The customs of the Indians are not the customs of the white people,” the girl made answer. “Lone-Elk is powerful. What Gentle Maiden believes would be as dipping water from the lake yonder with a cup—making no difference one way, no difference another.”
“But Captain-Pipe knows better, Gentle Maiden.”
“Hopocon—my father, that you call Captain Pipe—wants none of the Paleface teachings. When the missionaries told Gentle Maiden long ago there were no witches, he only pitied them that they knew no better.”