The speaker paused. I could feel her arm quivering around my waist. She was under the influence of some terrible emotion!
“Yours must be a strange story?” I remarked, with a view of inducing her to reveal it. “You have greatly excited my curiosity; but I know that I have no claim to your confidence.”
“You may yet win it.”
“Tell me how.”
“You say you intend returning to the States. I may have a commission for you; and you shall then hear my story. It is not much. Only a simple maiden, whose lover has been faithless—her father untrue to his paternal trust—her husband a cheat, a perjured villain.”
“Your relationships have been singularly unfortunate; but your words only mystify me the more. I should give much to know who you are, and what strange chance has led you hither?”
“Not now—time presses. Your comrades, if still alive, are in peril. That is your affair; but mine is that the Red-Hand may not escape. If he do, there’s one will grieve at it—one to whom I owe life and protection.”
“Of whom do you speak?”
“Of the mortal enemy of Red-Hand and his Arapahoes—of Wa-ka-ra.”
“Wa-ka-ra?”