“We are not strong enough,” he said. “Think! the She-wolf, Kenowatha, and the three pale snakes. There are but three of us—Leather-lips, Speckled Snake and Wacomet. They will fight—fight to the door of Manitou’s lodge. They possess the little guns (i. e., pistols); we the long shooting-irons and our knives. Brothers, there must be more of us—the other members of our dread band must be with us, and then—then, we keep the words we have given to the Great Spirit. Go and seek them—our brothers. Wacomet will squat here like the toad until you return, with other tomahawks that glitter in girdles not our own. Go, hasten, before the darkness flies. Our brothers will not be hard to find.”
While the two chiefs would fain have signalized themselves by a conflict with the hated spies whom they believed to be in the cave, they concluded to obey Wacomet, a chief superior to them in appointment; so they glided away, and the Ottawa was left alone in the darkness.
By adroit lying he had gained his ends, and prepared to carry his plans into execution. The wily Ottawa knew that the three spies were not in the cave, which also he knew to be tenanted by but two persons—Effie St. Pierre and a man whose voice he could not recognize, though he felt certain that he had heard it before. He knew, too, that his brother chiefs would experience trouble in beating up the other members of the Death League, and prided himself that ere they could return to the cave with the help sent for, he would be far on his journey to the “secret spot,” with the young white girl.
Again the Ottawa crept forward, and at length the turning of an angle brought him in full view of the inmates of the cave.
In the center of the underground apartment a bright fire leaped ceilingward, and bathed the entire chamber in a ruddy light. Upon a couch of skins lay the form of a man, whose face the Ottawa at once recognized, and an ejaculation of surprise and triumph, entirely unexpected, bubbled to his lips.
“Not only will Wacomet take the girl,” muttered the Indian, as he shrunk from the glare of the fire, “but he will take the skins, rifles and gold-pieces, that the great red-coat at the fort offers for the pale-face, who struck his young soldier. Ha! how came the pale soldier here? for the trader shot him, and he fell into the stream.”
Then the lips grew still, and for several minutes the Ottawa watched the inmates of the cave, himself as motionless as a statue. Frequent companionship with the whites had made Wacomet, to a great extent, a master of the English language, and every word that fell from the lips of those whom he watched was intelligible to him. Effie St. Pierre sat on the floor of the cave, near the British major’s couch, braiding the wealth of hair which she had drawn over her shoulders. With upturned face, Rudolph Runnion was breathing into her ears the story of his twice-told passion, to which the girl was listening calmly and in silence. Still there lurked around her lips a sneer, for the tale to which she was listening; no doubt her mind flitted back to the scene beneath the cottonwood, and her narrow escape from the brutal lusts of the minion of an imbecile king who spoke.
By and by Wacomet ceased to listen to the conversation which had informed him that Major Runnion’s wound was healing rapidly, and turned his dark orbs upon the beautiful girl.
Yes, yes, she should be his; of her three lovers—two white, the third red—he should be successful, and unable to restrain himself longer, he crept forward.
Unsuspicious of the red serpent and wolf combined that approached them, the twain remained motionless until—when Wacomet was very near the mouth of the corridor—Effie suddenly darted to her feet, and faced the intruder. Cursing in his bitter tongue, the alarm which his foot had sprung, the Ottawa darted forward with a tiger-like spring, and a moment later the cave was filled with smoke and a deafening report.