"How should you know--you who call yourself the Child of the Sun?" said Anuza, advancing some paces nearer to him and with his arm outstretched. "How should you know? Have you not then told us often, us 'the poor dogs of the Shawnee tribe,' that you know all that has ever passed or happened, and that there is nought on the land, nor in the skies, nor in the waters that you know not of? 'Tis strange that this you should not know."
"'Fore Gad!" whispered Buck, "the Injin's hit him fair."
So, indeed, it appeared the others around thought; and even Senamee, who hated Anuza for being so near him in power, turned towards Roderick with a glance that seemed to bid him answer this question.
But ere he could do so the Bear went on again, while the villain writhed at his words.
"Yet, oh! my kinsmen and brother warriors, if I have done this thing unwittingly, and with no knowledge of goodness shown to my father by those of her race in far-off days, what shall be thought of one who, also having dwelt under the white woman's roof, has yet turned and rent her? What be thought of one who, coming as a slave to her father's house, was yet well tended; who sat at meat in that house, ay, ate of their food and was clothed with their garments, and, in repayment, assailed first the woman's honour and next, after nursing warm his hate for many moons, sought to destroy her and hers, even to taking from her her house, and her life, and the life of those she loved?"
The impassable Indian blood was roused at last; like the mountain snow, that stirs not till the sun fires it and causes it to burst forth a torrent overwhelming all, it burst forth now and, with many cries, all in that assembly, excepting Senamee and those of his following, demanded to know what man, what snake, had done this thing?
"What snake!" exclaimed Anuza, "what snake! I will tell you, my brethren. The snake that has also warmed itself by our fires too long, and who, as it has turned and stung the white woman, will in time to come turn and sting us if we guard not against it. The snake who has cheated us and made us believe in him as a god when he himself was but a pale face and a slave of pale faces; the snake who has dwelt among us; the cheat and false medicine man--the Child of the Sun!"
[CHAPTER XXIV]
'TWIXT BEAR AND PANTHER
Ominous indeed were all the faces around us now. For the denunciation was terrible; if true, it could mean nothing but death for Roderick St. Amande. And that an awful death. Near the circle there stood a Cross which we who dwelt in the colonies knew well the meaning and use of. That holy symbol, so out of place amongst a band of savages, was not reared here with reverence, but because, being the token of the white man's faith, the token to which he bowed his knee and poured out his soul, their devilish minds had devised it as the instrument of his execution. And white men, we knew from all hearsay and gossip of those who had escaped, had often suffered on the cross; there was not an encampment of Shawnee Indians, of Manahoacs, of Powhattans, Nanticokes, or Doegs--all of which tribes surrounded Virginia--in which there was not one erected for their torture and execution. Only, in those executions their tortures and their sufferings were greater far than any which had ever been devised outside the colonies. Those whose fate led them to these Crosses suffered not only crucifixion, but worse, far worse. As they hung upon them, their poor hands and feet nailed to the beams, while their bare bodies were tortured by all the insects that abound in the region, they served also as marks for the arrows and, sometimes, the bullets of their savage foes. Happy indeed, were those to whom a vital wound was dealt early in their suffering, happy those who died at once and did not linger on, perhaps from one day to the other, expiring slowly amidst the jeers of those amongst whom they had fallen.