“Ugh!” grunted one, whose voice sounded amazingly like that of Phil Springer. “I wonder why the hated pup-paleface does not appear?”
“Peace, noble Osceola,” said another, with a shivery chuckle that might have come from the lips of Chipper Cooper. “The hated enemy of our people will surely return in time to his wigwam. If he don’t I’ll be froze stiff; for, with only this feather headdress as protection, I can’t keep my own wig warm to-night.”
“Oh, say, King Philip,” drawled the third, “don’t increase our sufferin’s by any such cracks as that.”
“Enjoy you not my persiflage, Tecumpseh?” asked the one who had been addressed as the war chief of the Narragansetts. “’Tis thus by light and airy jesting we aid the leaden hours to pass on fleeting wings.”
“Heap bub-bad Injun lingo, King Philip,” criticized Osceola. “A real aborigine such as you impersonate wouldn’t talk about leaden hours. Cuc-cut it out.”
“Your slang, Osceola, is somewhat too modern. You don’t s’pose that sucker got onto our game and fooled us by sneaking back to his teepee by some other road, do you?”
“If he has,” growled Tecumpseh, “he’ll sartainly have the laugh on us. But, in that case, why hain’t we been informed by Girty, the renegade, who’s trailin’ him?”
“’Sh!” hissed King Philip suddenly. “I hear a signal. Muffle the chin-music and listen.”
A smothered, suppressed sound, like the faint-hearted hooting of an owl, drifted up the dark path, and instantly the three savages were palpitant with eagerness.
“It’s Hunk—I mean Girty,” spluttered Cooper, rising on his hands and knees. “Where’s the blanket? Get the blanket ready, fellows. Now don’t bungle this job.”