The sun was just rising as the tenant of the lonely camp came suddenly into the light, stretching himself and yawning.
The click of the Sergeant’s rifle as he cocked it was the signal, and it sounded loud enough. Silently, swiftly and almost noiselessly the five men descended the bluff, and, almost before the murderer’s yawn permitted his mouth to close, it was open again, but this time in extraordinary astonishment. He was surrounded by stern, strange faces.
CHAPTER XXIII—ONE MYSTERY CLEARED AWAY
It was daylight when with parting war-whoops the Indians left the scene of the terrible fire they had kindled, dragging John Jerome by the thongs which bound him. But they took with them flames which threatened even greater danger to the Paleface boy—the fires of excitement, hate and merciless cruelty which the night’s barbarities had kindled in their brains. John realized this full well. Though the savages had been rough and brutal in their treatment of him before, now they were still more so. No indignity, no suffering was too great to be inflicted upon him.
Little wonder is it that on his own account poor John wished for but two things—the slightest opportunity to escape, or the end of it all quickly. Only the thoughts of Return, and how his friend would be searching for him everywhere, as soon as news reached his ears, buoyed up the wretched lad’s drooping spirits and gave him strength to endure the cruelties heaped on his defenseless head.
Tired out after their night’s carousal, most of the savages lay down to rest upon their arrival at the village, and John was allowed also to sink into a troubled sleep, though watched constantly. It was about noon when he fully awoke, to find that something out of the ordinary was taking place. By degrees he discovered what it was, learned that Captain Pipe had returned and that explanations were being made concerning the burning of the cabin.
Lone-Elk took upon himself the whole responsibility for the offense. The Little Paleface was a witch, he declared, and his brother, the White Fox, was a spy upon the Indians, and on the pretext of befriending Fishing Bird, had gone to Wayne’s camp to carry word of the movements of the Delawares.
The Seneca would have put the loyalty of Fishing Bird himself to the Delawares in question had he dared to do so, but he gained his point without it; gained all he sought—praise for his own loyalty to the cause of the Indians as a whole; no censure for the pillage and destruction of the white boys’ cabin, and last and greatest of all, the assurance that the captive, Little Paleface, would be put to death.
Let him be burned at the stake, Lone-Elk argued. Some of the younger Delawares had never seen a prisoner suffer by fire. It would warm their blood and teach them how to punish their enemies.
“By fire, then, let the witch be killed,” Captain Pipe had ordered, and the terrible sentence reached John Jerome in his guarded hut a little later.