“Kill her in minute! Don’t he know that she Davis’ spy? Hasn’t Phil lain beside the big General’s tent and heard Artena tell him about Jack? And Baltimore Bob came right from the camp after hearing Artena and Kit talking to Davis, and told Jack that she was a traitress. Ah, Artena, Jack knows all at last. You go with Phil now, eh?”
The girl nodded, and almost beside himself with joy, the savage drew his knife and severed her bonds.
Then she continued to converse with her dusky lover, until, completely hoodwinked by her cunning words, he was thrown off his guard, and never dreamed of treachery.
Without resistance, she possessed herself of his tomahawk, talking the while of their future life among the Klamaths, and all at once the weapon shot up into space, and as quickly and irresistibly descended upon the unprotected head of the red-skin!
It took a terrible blow to fell the giant; but Artena’s arm was equal to the emergency, and with a groan, he sunk to the ground.
She did not wish to kill him, for to him, no doubt, she owed her life, and with throbless heart, she bent over the stricken lover, and felt his pulse. For a moment it beat to the ratio of one hundred beats per minute, and then they lessened until they ceased altogether.
Hunter Phil was dead!
Quite assured of this, the Squaw Spy rose to her feet, and once more possessed herself of her own weapons. Now she would return to the bank, where Donald, no doubt, waited for her, and wondered at her absence. She knew that Phil was not aware of the ranger’s presence: his words had told her this; and she was too far remote from the bank to hear the shots that broke the stillness there a while after her departure. Thoroughly acquainted with the intricacies of the Lava-Beds, Artena thought that she could return to the spot without difficulty, and left the dead lover’s cave on her mission.
But she missed the proper corridor, and followed one which led her to a contemplation of the scene which was transpiring in Jack’s cave—the arraignment of Cohoon as a spy.
She watched it from the shadow of a lava-crag, with an interest bordering on terror, and when the Modoc’s arm was lifted to take the Warm Springer’s life, by a well-directed pistol-shot she disarmed the executioner, and then fearlessly showed herself, as the reader has already witnessed.