Emmett Darke’s face was almost white with rage, and he brought the heavy stock of his long rifle down on the floor with a sharp bang.
“Just so sure as that red devil has the misfortune to be caught anywhere near my cabin, I will shoot him down like the coward he is! My daughter is never to become a squaw, eh, Vinnie?”
“Never, father! Never will I become the Indian’s wife! I would sooner shed my own heart’s blood!”
She spoke so calmly and yet determinedly that her father half-shuddered. He knew that she meant every word, and he breathed an inward prayer that God would watch over his lonely child and guard her from all peril during his absence.
The hunter stood silent and motionless for a few moments, thinking intently. Arousing himself at length, he said, turning to the blood-hound, who was on his feet in an instant, running around him and licking his hands:
“Come, Death! We must go.”
In a few minutes they had passed out, and were walking rapidly and silently through the forest.
As Darke went away, a face appeared among the thick bushes close by the cabin—a red face, hideously daubed with black and yellow paint, with long, coarse black hair, hanging down the sunken jaws, and fierce black eyes flashing triumph and exultation as the hunter disappeared from view. Darke did not see this face, and the bushes closed over it in a moment, concealing it as suddenly as it had appeared.
After her father was gone, Vinnie went and stood before the fireplace, looking down into the red mass of leaping flames.
She was deeply buried in thought, and she heard no sound save the hissing of the fire and the wailing of the wind around the corners of the cabin, and through the bare branches of the great oaks outside.