“The shells of the big mouthed guns do not reach here,” said Scar-faced Charley, with a grim smile of satisfaction. “We are four miles from the place where the iron killed our braves.”
“Yes, four miles,” said Jack. “Charley, where think you is Artena?”
“Dead!” was the reply. “Shell blow her all to pieces.”
The expression that crossed the Modoc’s face told that he would fain not believe this. Jack could not believe that Artena was the enemy’s spy, and he would receive her into his confidence again were she to return.
Why should Artena, who was a Modoc, betray her own people?
Mouseh lowered fierce glances upon Baltimore Bob, who had boldly accused Artena of treason, and declared that he had heard her deliver the spy’s message to General Gillem.
His story had occupied the time that intervened between the girl’s entrance into the Modoc stronghold and the arrival of Kit and Cohoon above it; and, as the reader has seen, Jack’s chiefs, none of whom bore Artena any good-will, decided that she should die.
But the fatal shell seemed to have accomplished the task assigned to the tomahawk.
’Reesa (permit us, reader, to call the scout’s child by the pretty nickname which he had bestowed upon her) recovered consciousness before the new fort was reached, and, after a long time, realized her position. She was exercised almost to insanity concerning the fate of her father, and was afraid to question her jailer about him. So she spared her breath, and when she saw the blood-stained face of Evan Harris, she started forward with the cry of “father!”
“Father? he’s not your father!” cried Baltimore Bob, and grasping the girl rudely he flung her away.