Another mysterious happening of that first night out was well calculated to exercise a depressing effect on the men and to transform the contempt they had hitherto felt for Indians into a profound respect not unmixed with fear. Fontaine Salano slept rolled in his blanket not far from the lieutenant in command of the party, and within the full light of a camp-fire. Toward morning, however, this fire had burned so low that it shed but little light, and the place where Salano lay was buried in shadow.
When he awoke at the first peep of dawn, he was puzzled by the appearance of a number of strange objects that rose from the ground close by his head. He examined them curiously, but his curiosity was in an instant changed to horror when he discovered them to be seven blood-stained Indian arrows thrust into the ground, three on each side of where his head had lain and one at the upper end of his couch. This one bore impaled on its shaft the bloody heart of a recently killed deer, the significance of which was so plain that no one could fail to understand it.
The mere fact that the Indians had thus been able to penetrate undetected to the very centre of a guarded camp invested them in the eyes of the men with supernatural powers. The effect on Salano was precisely what Coacoochee had intended it should be. To feel that he had been completely within the power of one who had sworn to have his life and had only been spared as a cat spares a mouse, that she may prolong its torture for her own pleasure, filled the wretch with a terror pitiful to behold.
He begged Lieutenant Douglass to return at once to St. Augustine or at least to send him back under escort. The officer politely regretted his inability to comply with either of these requests, saying that it would be contrary to his duty to retire from that part of the country until satisfied that the Indians had left it, and that he dared not weaken his little force by detailing any men for escort duty.
The man displayed such abject cowardice that finally, more out of disgust than pity, Ralph Boyd offered to accompany him back to the city, and to his surprise, Salano accepted the offer eagerly. As they were both volunteers, Douglass had no authority for detaining them, though he protested against the undertaking, and tried to persuade them of its dangers. Ralph Boyd only laughed, and even Salano intimated a belief that the Indians would devote themselves to watching the movements of the scouting party, so that to remain with them would be to remain in the vicinity of greatest danger.
The lieutenant said that he should remove his command only a short distance, to a better and more secure camping-ground that he knew of not very far from Boyd's plantation, over which he promised to keep especial watch. He intended to remain at that place until he learned something definite regarding the movements of the Indians, and there Boyd promised to rejoin him on the following day.
Camp was broken, and the clear bugle notes of "boots and saddles" were ringing on the still morning air as Boyd and Salano rode away from the camp on the return trail to St. Augustine. They rode in silence; for one entertained too great a contempt for the other to care to talk with him, and Salano was perfecting a plan for obtaining one portion of the revenge upon which his mind was intent.
They had not proceeded thus more than two miles, when they came to a narrow gully through which they were obliged to ride in single file, and here Salano, with an exaggerated show of politeness, dropped behind, allowing Boyd to take the lead.
The latter rode unsuspectingly ahead for a few rods, and then, not hearing the sound of the other's horse behind him, turned to see if he were not coming.
The sight that met his eyes was so unexpected and terrible that for an instant it rendered him incapable of thought or action. Salano, dismounted from his horse, was slowly raising a rifle and taking deliberate aim at him. He could see the cruelly triumphant expression on the swarthy face. In that instant of time he also saw a flashing figure with uplifted arm leap from the underbrush behind Salano. Then all became a blank.