“What!” exclaimed the wounded man with sudden energy, as a flush overspread his pale face; “is he the son of Little Tim, the brother-in-law of Whitewing the prairie chief?”
“He is the son of Leetil Tim, an’ this be hims house.”
“Then,” exclaimed the stranger, with a pleased look, “I have reached, if not the end of my journey, at least a most important point in it, for I had appointed to meet Whitewing at this very spot, and did not know, when the Blackfoot Indian shot me, that I was so near the hut. It looked like a mere accident my finding the track which leads to it near the spot where I fell, but it is the Lord’s doing. Tell me, Softswan, have you never heard Whitewing and Little Tim speak of the pale-face missionary—the Preacher, they used to call me?”
“Yes, yes, oftin,” answered the girl eagerly. “Me tinks it bees you. Me very glad, an’ Leetil Tim he—”
Her speech was cut short at this point by a repetition of the appalling war-whoop which had already disturbed the echoes of the gorge more than once that day.
Naturally the attention of Softswan had been somewhat distracted by the foregoing conversation, and she had allowed the Indians to burst from the thicket and rush up the track a few paces before she was able to bring the big-bore gun to bear on them.
“Slay them not, Softswan,” cried the preacher anxiously, as he tried to rise and prevent her firing. “We cannot escape them.”
He was too late. She had already pressed the trigger, and the roar of the huge gun was reverberating from cliff to cliff like miniature thunder; but his cry had not been too late to produce wavering in the girl’s wind, inducing her to take bad aim, so that the handful of slugs with which the piece had been charged went hissing over the assailants’ heads instead of killing them. The stupendous hissing and noise, however, had the effect of momentarily arresting the savages, and inducing each man to seek the shelter of the nearest shrub.
“Com queek,” cried Softswan, seizing the preacher’s hand. “You be deaded soon if you not com queek.”
Feeling the full force of this remark, the wounded man, exerting all his strength, arose, and suffered himself to be led into the hut. Passing quickly out by a door at the back, the preacher and the bride found themselves on a narrow ledge of rock, from one side of which was the precipice down which Big Tim had made his perilous descent. Close to their feet lay a great flat rock or natural slab, two yards beyond which the ledge terminated in a sheer precipice.