She towered six feet above her moccasins, and her frame seemed built of iron. She wore a frock of tanned doe-skin, the fringes of which touched her knees. The leggins which fitted her nether limbs to a fault, were composed of panther skins, secured to the moccasins by painted strips of deer-hide. Over all these garments she wore a long, dark robe whose ample folds disappeared in the canoe, and lent a royal aspect to its strange wearer. Her head was surrounded by a dress, composed of white heron-feathers, and among her raven locks, which streamed over her shoulders, and covered her beaded bosom, were curiously, but not distastily, woven the gaudy feathers of the North American oriole.
The features, more than the dress of the singular being so suddenly encountered on the swollen stream, commanded the hunter’s attention.
They belonged to a woman in the noon, or summer of life. Here and there a wrinkle was to be seen, and a sadly strange beauty pervaded her countenance. But the eyes—those faithful indexes of the human heart—proclaimed their possessor—a white woman—mad!
Yes, the unmistakable fire of insanity blazed fiercely in those baleful orbs, and told the single beholder that she was a perfect demon, when the paroxysm of lunacy swayed her.
But she was not alone.
On either side of her stood a huge black wolf, while at her feet sat a monster gray one. A collar of deer-skin, elaborately beaded, encircled the necks of the fierce brutes, and from their shaggy backs the muddy water dripped.
The sight was enough to blanch the boldest cheek, and Mayne Fairfax could not repress a shriek of terror. It bubbled to his lips unsummoned.
He now had ocular proof that the dreadful Wolf-Queen was not a myth.
The canoe and its terrible freight approached with an impetus received from the swift waters. No oars were needed to keep it in the center of the stream—a swift current did this service for the Wolf-Queen, who stood erect in the bark, clutching a drawn bow.
Mayne Fairfax’s presence of mind soon returned. He griped his rifle, but ere it struck his shoulder the twang of a bow-string smote his ears, and a barbed shaft buried itself in his right breast. Instantaneously a faintness stole over him, but the courageous hunter repressed it, as the canoe of the Amazon grated against his.