He first saw Charley Shafer standing beside an Indian girl, while Lina Aiken clung to his arm, looking with pallid features upon the dark mob, which surrounded them with knives and tomahawks.
Near the chief who was haranguing the boisterous multitude, when Kenoagla’s party rode into the village, lay two dead bodies. The whitish lasso lying on the throbless breast proclaimed the identity of one, while the absence of plumes from the other head, proclaimed its owner a common warrior.
Tom Kyle’s eyes swept the entire scene in an instant, and he drove the spurs into his animal’s flanks with an oath, which was a frequent visitor to his lips.
The speaker ceased, and a shout of triumph pealed from his lips. He had attained the object of his harangue—time; and at sight of the returning band the red-skins divided, and the renegade halted in the “square.”
“The other boy, by heavens!” exclaimed the renegade, his eyes recognizing Tecumseh’s young rider. “Where’s the horse?”
“Safe in the Pawnee village,” answered an Indian.
“Good! he’s mine.”
The savages crowded about the band to learn the particulars of their expedition, and terrible shouts rent the air when the bursting of the cottonwood was made known. Fierce looks were shot at George Long, who sat on the white mustang at the renegade’s side; but the red-man’s anger reached its loftiest pinnacle when a certain corpse was brought into the circle.
Tom Kyle had tried to prepare the savages for bad news; but his words shot bitter arrows at the youthful captive, and when the warriors laid the corpse of Red Eagle beside that of White Lasso, his secret enemy, there was a perceptible movement toward the boy. Winnesaw bent over the body.
“Back!” cried the renegade, rising in his stirrups. “Do not slay the boy in the heat of your anger. The upper Pawnees are here; they claim the two pale boys; we gave them to our river brethren when the white man’s trail fell into our hands. We must listen to the upper Pawnees.”