Memory would return to the poor woman, but, unaccompanied by reason, it seemed of little account.
“Yes, yes,” she cried, throwing herself before Fairfax, and fastening her dark eyes on the three spots. “Alaska had a little boy once, and he had three marks on his shoulder, just like these,” and her finger touched the birth marks. “Oh, it was many, many moons ago, when Alaska had no wolves. But the Great Spirit has given Alaska her little boy again, and he shall become a Shawnee—he shall not die. He shall be King of the Wolves!”
While she spoke, Tecumseh glided from the lodge, and resought his own.
“The white hunter may be Alaska’s boy,” he muttered, “for Puekeshinwa, Tecumseh’s father, spoke thus many snows ago. Then he will not die.”
Mayne Fairfax listened a long time to Alaska’s words, before he spoke.
He knew well his parentage—that he was the child of Ronald Fairfax. His first recollections were of Fairfax manor, and he, of course, believed himself to be a Fairfax. The moles on his shoulder he believed to be mere accidental counterparts of those on the person of a child loved by Alaska before her days of lunacy—and he resolved not to gainsay the mad queen, for the moles might prove the means of saving his life, and perhaps instrumental in the rescue of Eudora, and the prisoners of the strong lodge.
“The white hunter is Alaska’s little boy,” he said, smiling at the oddity of his own words, “and he will be King of the Wolves. Let Alaska haste to make him well, and he will tame all the wolves in the great forests, and become their White King.”
“And will Alaska’s child hate the White Chief?” she asked, with great eagerness.
“Yes,” answered Mayne, and he continued, inaudibly, “God knows my heart spoke then.”
His words brought a laugh to Alaska’s lips, and continually calling him her “little boy,” she applied bruised and emollient herbs to his wounds, and the young Virginian, assured of his safety, so far as the mad queen’s protection went, received new strength. With such a potent protector as she, white nor Indian would not dare seek his life.