A shiver crept to the young man’s heart.
“Don’t say no, boy,” whispered Hewitt. “Good’ll come of it. Go with the poor creature, and mebbe she’ll change her mind, and make you her boy. Crazy people take strange notions sometimes.”
CHAPTER XI.
THE MOLES ON THE SHOULDER.
When Alaska rekindled the fire in her lodge, a horrible sight met Mayne Fairfax’s gaze.
Stiff and bloody, in one corner of the first apartment, lay Newaska, a terrible example of the vengeance of the wolf. His eyes, pregnant with the stare of death, were wide extended, and the lifeless balls seemed bursting from their sockets.
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the mad-woman, pointing to the ghastly corpse. “Newaska was loved by Alaska: but he worked for the White Chief, and her children tore the great veins in his throat.”
Her own senses—if any that mad-woman possessed—disgusted at the horrible sight, Alaska covered the corpse with several robes, and threw more boughs on the fire.
It was now near the silent midnight hour, and not a sound telling of the recent turmoil, came to the Wolf-Queen’s lodge, which, while she replenished the fire, the young man took occasion to notice. It was large and commodious, that is, in the eye of the Indian. The birchen walls were covered with gaudy skins, fantastically arranged, and the natural floor was hidden by thick mats, formed by Alaska’s hands. In one corner of the first apartment lay the stiff form of Leperto, slain by the mysterious shot from Hewitt’s cave, and over it stood a wolf as sentry. The guard showed his teeth as Fairfax entered the lodge, and each one of Alaska’s children—strange progeny for a mad-woman!—seemed eager to bury their fangs in the young hunter’s flesh.
Mayne Fairfax realized the danger he was in.
Now the Wolf-Queen was calm and seemingly lucid; but he knew not how soon the spasm of lunacy would take possession of her injured brain, and the consequences of that spasm he knew would be dreadful, for he was completely in her power.