"Here's the camp," cried Harvey; and they grounded the canoes within its shadow.
The chief, Red Bull, clearly not resigned to his fate, but squirming helplessly, was conveyed up the bank and set down against a convenient stump. The canoes were drawn on shore, and the party gathered about him.
"What are we going to do with him, anyway, now we've got him?" inquired George Warren.
"Oh, he's got to be tried by a war council," said Henry Burns; "and all of us are scouts, and we've got to tell how many pale-faces he's scalped, and then he's got to be sentenced to be put to torture and scalped and—and all that sort of thing. And then we'll dance around him and—and then by and by—well, I suppose we'll have to let him go. I don't know just how, but we'll arrange that. But we've got to have a fire first, to make it a real war council."
They had one going shortly, down near the shore, and casting a weird glare upon the scene.
After a preliminary dance about their captive, in which they lent colour to the picture by brandishing war-clubs and improvised tomahawks, they sat in solemn council on the chief.
"Fellow scouts," said Henry Burns, addressing his assembled followers, "this is the great Indian chief, Magua, the dog of the Wyandots—"
"Whoopee!" yelled Little Tim, "that's him. He killed Un-cuss, didn't he, Henry?"
"The brave scout has spoken well," replied Henry Burns. "This is the cruel dog of the Wyandots; slayer of the brave Uncas; shot at by Hawkeye, the friend of the Delawares—"
"I thought you said he killed him—in the book," cried Little Tim.