Intschu-Tschuna spat in my face. “Miserable cur!” he said, “thief of our land, dare to follow us, and I will crush you!”
I let the insult pass, awed by the presence of the dead and my promise to him.
The white men stood dumbly waiting to see what the Apaches would do. They never glanced at us again. Placing the corpse on the horse which Kleki-Petrah had ridden, they bound it fast, took the bridle, and, mounting themselves, rode away.
They spoke no word, and as Sam Hawkins watched them disappear he said: “That is more dangerous than the most dreadful threats. We shall see trouble, and there lies the cause, with no mind or soul; what shall we do with him?”
I did not wait to hear the answer; I saddled my horse and rode away. I wished to be alone to escape hearing this last awful half-hour discussed. It was late in the evening when, weary and exhausted in body and soul, I returned to the camp.
CHAPTER VII.
A COMPACT WITH THE KIOWAS.
It was decided by our party that we were not able, under the circumstances, to punish Rattler for his crime, which was most unsatisfactory to my youthful sense of justice. Sam pointed out, however, that his punishment was swift and certain at the hands of the Apaches; but the drawback to this consolation was that we who were innocent were likely to suffer with the guilty. We knew that the Indians would return to avenge Kleki-Petrah’s murder as soon as they could summon their warriors, and the most important thing for us was to discover where the main body of the braves were, how far the chief and his son must ride to come up with them, and consequently when we could expect their return. Bancroft was most anxious to finish our work before we left, provided there was time before the anticipated attack, and calculated that it would require five days to complete our task. So Sam Hawkins volunteered to ride on the trail of the chiefs who had visited us, to discover, if possible, all that we needed to know, and took me with him, partly for protection, because I had earned such a reputation for being able to strike a hard blow with what Sam called my “lily lady-fingers,” partly that I might have experience in the art of following a trail, and partly, I hope, because he liked to have me with him.
I had not been able to eat or sleep the night after the murder, for I could not cease going over the dreadful scene. I saw myself seated by Kleki-Petrah, heard his story, which had become to me a dying confession, and thought again and again of his last words, expressing a presentiment of his coming death. Yes, the tree of his life had not fallen naturally, but had been violently cut down, and by what an assassin, for what a reason, and in what a manner! If there was any consolation to be found in the bloody work of that day, it was that Kleki-Petrah had died on Winnetou’s heart, and he had received the shot intended for his beloved pupil.
But what of his request that I should cling to Winnetou and fulfil the work that he had begun? Only a few moments before he had said that we should probably never meet again, and indeed my path in life lay far enough from the Apaches, and yet he had left me a problem the solution of which would bring me into the most intimate relations with that tribe. Was this request but chance words? Or was the dying man in the last moment of his life, as his soul fluttered on the border of the next world, given a glimpse of the future? It seems so, for events enabled me to fulfil his wish, though then it appeared extremely unlikely that I should ever be brought into friendly contact with Winnetou.