The sight filled me with a strange dread. I feared to think that it was our enemy, our bitter enemy, who had thus been reserved, as it seemed, for a death more awful than any that had already overtaken the poor dupes of his evil counsel and the recipients of his bribes. Then I thought of my poor murdered Donogh, and my heart grew hard; and then again came the whispering of a better nature, and the terrible spectacle before me chased away the promptings of revenge. That the figure was really that of McDermott there could no longer be any doubt. Turning his head wildly towards either shore in the vain hope of obtaining assistance, he had now observed us as we stood on the projecting rock, and his voice, raised in cries for assistance, reached us, even through the din of the cataract and above the whirl of waters.
“Help, help!” he cried, in tones that rang with the terror and the horror that had seized upon him. But the merciless torrent rolled down in a volume ever increasing, still rising higher, and momentarily breaking the frail link that bound him to life. The sight was all too much for me. I forgot everything of the past in the horrible fact before me of a human being in this awful extremity, and turning to the Sioux I exclaimed,—
“Can we save him? Can we reach him by any means?”
But I had little counted on the real depth of the animosity with which Red Cloud regarded his enemy.
“Save him? Reach him?” he cried. “Do you imagine that if I could reach him I would let yon torrent rob me of his death?”
As he spoke, his eyes glared, his frame shook with passion, and in the grasp which he laid upon my arm his fingers closed in iron strength. Wild with rage, he let go my arm only to seize his gun, as he cried in tones of savage exultation,—
“Ho, villain trader, who is it to whom you cry for help? It is the son of him whom you sold to a cruel death. It is he whose life you have sought through years of blood. It is Red Cloud, the Sioux. Behold, you are at the grave of the man you sold and murdered. His spirit is in the air that surrounds you, in the trees that mock at your agony, in those waters that are dragging you to death. But they shall not take you from me. You shall die, villain, by my hand.”
He raised his rifle. His hand was now steady, his eye seemed calm; another instant, and the trader’s death would have been certain; but I could stand it no longer.