With pallid face she leant over the youth, and raised his head, which seemed to her a lump of iron ore.
“Dead—dead!” she groaned. “The trail which seemed ending grows longer than ever now. ‘Near two oaks, by the lake,’ he said. There lies the mystery-prisoning ring. I’ll hunt it till I die! I’ll tear it from the hands of the chief in the midst of his people, if I encounter it there. Heaven give me strength to meet the dangers which are to come!”
CHAPTER V.
SILVER RIFLE AMONG HER FOES.
There was no denying the fact—Dohma, the Chippewa, was dead. At least the girl would have sworn he was.
Silver Rifle held his head in her lap a long time before she gave him up.
She did not want to lose the young Indian when she needed him most, and now that he was gone, she feared that she would never find the ring.
“I’ll bury the foes side by side,” she murmured, relinquishing the heavy head, and approaching the fire. “They’ll not quarrel about me in the grave, I hope.”
She supplied herself with a torch from the fire, and moved to a spot some distance beyond the dead Indians, where earth instead of stone formed the floor of the cavern.
Selecting a long and sharp piece of slate, she digged or scooped out a large grave, and with Herculean strength dragged the two savages from the light. Tenderly she wrapped Dohma in a blanket, and placed him beside the furious chief who had sent him to the hunting-grounds of his people.
“I’m going to rest awhile, now,” she said, in a long-drawn breath, after finishing the work of burial, “and then I’m going into the woods again. Dohma was mistaken. But one White Tiger lives; there can not be another. I saw him on the lake one night, and since, I have seen him in the woods. He is a half-breed, too. If I meet him, he must pay for losing the ring, for undoubtedly the bauble which poor Dohma found in the forest was mine.”