It was a story that lost nothing of its awful significance from her broken and sometimes almost incoherent way of telling it. He learnt how Ukisama and his son Sate had heard of Le Gros’ “strike,” and how they strove by every means in their power to jump in on it. How they had searched Loon Creek from end to end, and finally abandoned their search convinced that the missionary had given that as the locality simply to mislead. Then at once they became angry and were determined to make him yield them his secret.
She told him of the descent upon the mission at Fox Bluff, where they meant to wring his secret from him, and how they had utterly failed through the impetuosity of her son, Sate, who, when the missionary prepared to defend himself with his guns, fired a reckless shot which mortally wounded him. Hela, she declared, deplored the act as ruining his chance of learning the man’s secret. Then she declared that the squaw of the man Usak had interfered, and again the hot-headed Sate had taken the matter into his own hands and shot her down.
“And your Hela, this boy’s father, just looked on while this was done?”
Wilder’s question came sharply when the woman narrated this incredible detail of her story with an air of entirely honest conviction.
“No, no,” she cried, and hastily launched a torrential defence of her blinded charge.
She denied flatly that her husband desired to harm a hair of the head of anyone. But Sate was a wild youth whom none could tame, and least of all his father. No. When his father found what had been done he became scared, and it was then he did the only thing left him. He fired the mission in the hope of hiding up his son’s crime. Then she said they hastened away, and came up the river with all speed. But they had forgotten Usak, whom they had not encountered. She did not know how it came, nor did her husband. But Usak knew them. He knew their home here in this valley, and he set out, and, by means they did not understand, he arrived at this house before them.
Then she detailed, with painful emotion the things that happened with Usak’s coming. How he, a great, fierce Indian man, stole in on the house and murdered their three servants—the rest all being away with her husband. The last one, after being mortally wounded by the Indian’s hunting knife, managing to reach her in the sitting hall to warn her. He fell dead on the floor in a pool of blood before her eyes. In her terror she had hastily fled to the secret cellars which were under the house, where they stored their trade in gold. And so she remained until Usak had passed from the house of death. Then long afterwards, she learned from Hela that he passed down the river and waited for their return with the canoe. He waited hidden on the bank. And he shot every man in the canoe as it passed, including their son Sate. He spared none. Not one—except her husband. And so her husband made the landing where she was awaiting him.
Then came the final tragedy. The Indian was in hiding. He had kept pace with the boat, and when Hela landed he leapt out on him to complete his terrible purpose. He fought not to kill but to blind. And he succeeded. He left her man alive, but with his eyes lying on his cheeks. And, before he went, he warned them what he had done was sufficient for the time. But that later, after a long time, he would return and kill them both.
“And he will come,” she wailed in conclusion. “For he is an Indian, and his squaw was killed by our son. He will come. Oh, yes.”
“Yet you stay here? Why?” Again came Wilder’s sharp question. He had steeled himself against the pity which the woman’s unutterable despair inspired.