"And, my lord, remembering this, 'tis not difficult to draw therefrom a conclusion that shall, I think, be near the mark. He has denounced the villain Roderick--see how he cringes in his chair."
"In his chair? Is that creature Roderick?"
"It is, indeed, and I will wager that on this conflict his life depends. And, look, look! The Bear presses the other hard. See how he drives him back. Ah, God! he stumbles, he is--no, no! See, see, my lord, see! Ah, heavens! it is too dreadful!" And he placed his hands before his eyes. Even he, who had fought so well and risked his life a score of times three nights ago, could not witness the end of this fray.
It was, indeed, too dreadful. The end of the combat had come. Even as O'Rourke had been speaking, the Bear, creeping ever forward towards the other, had prepared to make a spring at him when, his foot catching against some unevenness in the baked earth, he stumbled and nearly fell. And then, indeed, it looked as though he were lost. In an instant his antagonist was at him; on high he whirled the dreadful tomahawk, we saw its gleam as it descended, we heard Joice and Mary scream and clasp their hands--and we saw that it had missed its mark. It had overshot the other's shoulder; as it descended the Panther's great forearm alone struck on the shoulder of the Bear, the deadly axe itself cut into nothing but empty space. So the latter had lost the one chance given him in the fray.
But now his own doom was sealed--now at the moment that O'Rourke called out in terror. As the Bear recovered himself from what was in itself a terrible blow given by the muscular arm of the other savage, so he seized that arm with his left hand,--it closed upon that other's limb as a vice closes when tightly screwed!--he wrenched the arm round, dragging with it its owner's body, and then, high, swift, and sudden, his own tomahawk flashed in the air and, descending, cleft his antagonists head in half, he falling quivering and dead.
From us, lying up there on the rise of the bluff, there came a gasp, a sigh of relief that the horrid combat which had caused us all to hold our breath was finished; from the Indians below there arose dreadful whoops and yells. They rushed into the great circle, they shouted and they screamed; their noted impassiveness gone now, for a time at least. They jeered at the great dead carcase lying there, a pool of blood around it, and with the weapon still in its sinewy hand; they even dabbled their fingers in that blood as the cried: "Anuza is now our chief. The Bear shall rule over us. Senamee was unworthy, and he has met his fate."
Now, as we prepared to descend into their midst, we saw Anuza, as they termed him, turn towards the prisoners. Looking principally, it seemed to me, towards Joice, we heard him say:
"White woman, and you, her kin, have I atoned somewhat for the sin that I have done to you! The dead whom we slew in your houses we cannot bring back, but one of those who urged us most to the fray has answered for it. Now shall the other--the cheat, the false medicine man--be punished also." And he turned towards where my cousin had sat but a moment before.
"What!" he exclaimed, rushing towards the bench, "what, gone! Gone! Where is he?"
But this none could answer for, in the few moments of intense excitement that had followed the death of him whom they called Senamee, he had disappeared.