“Is this the way you watch your captives?” he demanded, turning to the guards who had watched the brief combat with bated breath, and ready weapons. “Here, take the knife, and see that the scarlet tigress has no more arms secreted upon her person. Mouseh shall hear of this if you don’t watch his captive closer.”
With the last word he glanced at Artena, lying motionless on the skins, then strode past the abashed sentries, and turned into the first corridor that greeted his left hand.
“White girl’s Harry’s captive,” he said in a low tone, addressing the burden that lay across his arm. “What does she say now? Surely she recollects the Indians who used to lay flowers on her door-sill on Lost River. Has the girl forgotten New York Harry? New York Harry—ha! ha! ha!”
But ’Reesa South made no reply, and after an observation in the dark, the Indian uttered an exclamation.
His captive was asleep.
Had her ears been on the alert she might have recognized the voice in the laugh that rung through the gloom.
“This is the fifth passage,” said Harry, suddenly pausing before what his band told him was the mouth of a subterranean corridor. “I missed Doctor Frank among the chiefs, and may be that the fool has played me false. I’ll see while I’m here, for I’m never coming back to this spot again. Wonder what Jack would say to hear that! But,” as he deposited his captive on the floor and ignited several lucifer matches by striking them against the wall, “I’ve had enough of this war, and when an Indian can save his neck, he’s a fool if he doesn’t.”
For a moment the matches burned blue, and then began to reveal the interior of the cave.
Slowly a dark object on the floor grew into shape, and the Indian started back when he recognized it.
It was the figure of an Indian, and the necklace of claws and snake’s teeth that encircled the swollen and putrid neck, proclaimed him a medicine-man.