“I hold the best hand, now,” he hissed, as he paused before the giant hermit. “I’ll blunt the keen edge of my knife, and it will tear the covering from your heart.”
The hermit gritted his teeth, and something like a tremor passed over his frame. It was the tremor attesting the gathering of his Samsonian strength. The next moment, his bonds burst with a sharp noise, and his fingers griped Jim Girty’s throat!
Tighter and tighter grew the terrible grip; Girty’s eyes stared wildly at his foe, his tongue protruded from his throat, and his color changed to a sickly hue.
Tecumseh smiled at Hewitt’s action, and looked for Alaska; but she and her wolves stood not among the throng of women.
For some moments the savages gazed upon the scene spellbound, when, with sudden impulse, they sprung at the giant. A score of hands grasped his arm, and, unresisting, he let Girty slide from his grip to the earth, where he lay blackened and motionless.
The next moment they were being hurried toward the prison-lodge, there to await their dreadful doom.
“I guess I’ve choked that devil to death,” whispered Hewitt to the weak young hunter, whom he supported at his side. “But I guess, too, that we’re in for it to-night, unless something mighty uncommon turns up. I thought that mad-woman would do something for us; but I reckon that she sees revenge in the fate proclaimed for us by the man she hates. Oh! I’d like to know who she is; but I guess that I will never know now.”
A few minutes later, the door of the strong hut closed behind them.
CHAPTER IX.
ONE OF ALASKA’S WHIMS.
While the Shawnee council was deciding the doom of the three hunters, Alaska silently left the spot, and sought her wigwam. Her countenance bore but few traces of insanity. The wild fire of lunacy had grown dim in her eyes, and a casual observer would have believed her possessed of sanity.