“Something must have happened to the girl. She was to have been here in one hour, and here I have waited two. It’s after midnight now. I’ll wait another ten minutes, and then I’ll go and see what’s up.”
The low sounds proceeded from a dark spot near three hundred yards from the mouth of the cave wherein we have just introduced the renowned Captain Jack to the reader, and the voice was that of Kit South.
Undiscovered, they had found their way—the scout and Artena—to the spot occupied by the former, and the girl spy had boldly proceeded to the lair of the Modoc tiger, for the purpose of luring him thence, that he might be kidnapped after the daring plan they had formed.
Artena, as the reader has heard her aver, was a Modoc.
Prior to the commencement of hostilities between the Indians and the Government, she was unknown to the blue-coated defenders of the latter; but when Donald McKay offered our General the services of his Warm Spring Indians, she came forth, and offered herself as a spy.
Her tribal relations to the Modoc chief was a poor recommendation in the eyes of Canby; but, upon the earnest solicitation of Cohoon, the Warm Spring scout, seconded by McKay, she was installed in the dangerous office of spy, and at once became of great value to the troops.
She persisted in calling herself a Warm Spring Indian, when all knew, from her features, that she was a full-blooded Modoc.
For weeks she had played a dangerous double role. Leaving Jack’s camp at the dead of night for the purpose, as she would tell that worthy, of gaining information concerning the movements of the army, she would find her way to Canby or Gillem’s head-quarters, and open her budget of news about the designs of the Modoc rebel.
It was Artena who proposed the kidnapping of Captain Jack, and this bold movement found a response in the breast of Kit South, who believed that, deprived of their chieftain, the Modocs would not hold out longer.
After a lapse of ten minutes, the scout rose to his feet and glided toward the cave, with whose labyrinths he had been familiar for years.