“I have sought her everywhere. I only heard of her departure after you left the encampment. Bury your tomahawk in my brain if you will, for I have been the cause.”
“What does the boy rave about? What does it all mean? Has the Great Spirit cursed me in all my hopes? Speak, Nelatu. Where is your sister? You say she is gone. Gone! Gone! With whom?”
“With Warren Rody!”
Oluski uttered a shriek of mingled rage and grief, pressed his hand upon his heart, and reeling, would have fallen to the earth but for Wacora’s arm, at that instant thrown around him.
The two young men bent over his prostrate form, which his nephew had gently laid upon the sward.
A few faint, murmuring words escaped from his lips; so faint, indeed, that they were not comprehended by either son or nephew.
The frown which had gathered on his brow in his interview with Elias Rody gradually gave place to a gentle smile. His eyes, for an instant, rested sorrowfully on the face of Nelatu, then on Wacora, and were closed for ever!
With that look had his life ended. The spirit of the Seminole Chief had departed to a better land.
Wounded in his friendship, doubly wounded in his pride, cruelly stabbed by the desertion of his own daughter and the weakness of his own son, outraged as friend and father, the old man’s heart had burst within his bosom!
Tenderly covering the body with his blanket, Wacora stooped and kissed the cold brow in silence, registering a vow of vengeance upon his murderers!