“That is not the only reason; it is the influence of Kleki-Petrah, powerful though he is dead. These Indians have absorbed more real, interior Christianity than you suspect.”
We looked over towards the cart wherein the doomed man lay, and saw a long box-like object, on which a man was bound.
“That is the coffin,” said Sam, “made of hollow logs with wet leather drawn over them, which will be air-tight when the leather has dried. Kleki-Petrah’s body has been embalmed, you know.”
Not far from the head of the valley rose a cliff on which an open square had been newly made of great stones piled on top of each other, and many more stones had been gathered together around it. The man bound on the coffin was now carried to this square. It was Rattler.
“Do you know why those stones have been collected there?” asked Sam.
“To build a tomb, I suppose.”
“Yes; a double tomb.”
“For Rattler, too?”
“Yes; they will bury the murderer with his victim.”
“Horrible! Think of being bound alive to the coffin of the man one killed, knowing that is to be one’s last resting-place!”