“Ha! ha! ha!” said the laugh. “Another dark lock for my lone home—another puncture for my crescent—another red-man dead before the avenging rifle! How fast they fall before my eyes! When my gun speaks, the Manitou’s lodge opens to receive a spirit. How long will such work last?” and she glanced at her rifle. “How long? Until the last crescent is full of little holes; then—and not until then—the dead will have been avenged.”
With the last words still quivering on her lips, she stooped and wound the Ottawa’s raven scalp-lock around her left hand. A quick sweep of the scalping-knife, and with the gory scalp clutched in her hand, the Girl Avenger rose to her feet.
“Another brave and the second crescent will be completed,” she said, in French, thrusting the scalp into her girdle. “I know you, Jaguar-tail,” and her gaze fell upon the dead Indian. “Once my gun covered your heart—it was many moons ago—but you saw me, and falling flat in your boat, the rapids of the Miami of the Lake[1] bore you from my sight. This is my fortieth scalp-lock. Ha! my mark—the seal of the She-wolf. I’d—”
The sentence was broken by the crack of a rifle; the avenger’s head fell backward; an abortive shriek terminated on her now pallid lips, which a moment later lay motionless on the cold brow of the Ottawa!
From a clump of undergrowth, near the Ottawa’s covert, leaped the burly form of a man, whose shaggy red hair, low forehead, meeting above a short, flat nose, gray sunken eyes, dark and sinister expression of countenance, declared him to be Joe Girty, the dread renegade. He wore the Indian costume, but without ornament, and his crimson handkerchief, while it supplied the place of a hat, hid an unsightly wound on his forehead. On each side, in his belt, was stuck a silver-mounted pistol; at his left hung a short dirk, serving occasionally the uses of a knife, and, as he ran toward the river, he trailed a clumsy rifle at his right.
“Hell has aided me at last!” he hissed, in triumphant glee, while swimming the stream, with the rifle above his head. “Long have I watched for you, my young She-wolf, and while watching trembled for my life. You are fast depopulating the tribe; but now I guess as how your yelp—the accursed precursor of death—has been heard for the last time. Won’t there be pandemonium in the village to-night, when I walk among the warriors and cast your dead body at their feet! Oh, Joe Girty, you’ve did a splendid thing to-day. The slaying of the young She-wolf will make you immortal. Satan remains true to the league you formed with him years ago, and now beneath your rifle, falls the Terror of the Maumee. This— What! did the She-wolf move her head?” he cried, as he bent over his victim.
The eyes of the girl opened and closed spasmodically, but without comprehending her situation.
A crimson furrow athwart her temple indicated the course of Joe Girty’s ponderous ball.
“By George! she’s not dead, after all!” exclaimed the renegade. “But I’m not sorry—be hanged if I am. I’ll carry the She-wolf to the village, and when Coocoochee and Leather-lips get through with their devilish orgies, we’ll have a big fire. I know Indians who’ll walk a hundred miles to see this girl sizzle. Snakes! she’s pretty. What a glorious squaw she’d make for my boy, Kenowatha! But she’s not for him, no, not for him! She’s for the fire.”
A few drops of water restored the girl to consciousness.