CHAPTER XXXIII IN WHICH MY FRIEND BECOMES MY FOE
IN the centre of the wigwam the customary fire burned clear and bright, showing the white mats, the dressed skins, the implements of war hanging upon the bark walls,—all the usual furniture of an Indian dwelling,—and showing also Nantauquas standing against the stripped trunk of a pine that pierced the wigwam from floor to roof. The fire was between us. He stood so rigid, at his full height, with folded arms and head held high, and his features were so blank and still, so forced and frozen, as it were, into composure, that, with the red light beating upon him and the thin smoke curling above his head, he had the look of a warrior tied to the stake.
“Nantauquas!” I exclaimed, and striding past the fire would have touched him but that with a slight and authoritative motion of the hand he kept me back. Otherwise there was no change in his position or in the dead calm of his face.
The Indian maid had dropped the mat at the entrance, and if she waited, waited without in the darkness. Diccon, now staring at the young chief, now eyeing the weapons upon the wall with all a lover's passion, kept near the doorway. Through the thickness of the bark and woven twigs the wild cries and singing came to us somewhat faintly; beneath that distant noise could be heard the wind in the trees and the soft fall of the burning pine.
“Well!” I asked at last. “What is the matter, my friend?”
For a full minute he made no answer, and when he did speak his voice matched his face.
“My friend,” he said, “I am going to show myself a friend indeed to the English, to the strangers who were not content with their own hunting grounds beyond the great salt water. When I have done this, I do not know that Captain Percy will call me 'friend' again.”
“You were wont to speak plainly, Nantauquas,” I answered him. “I am not fond of riddles.”
Again he waited, as though he found speech difficult. I stared at him in amazement, he was so changed in so short a time.