Silently Alaska approached the door, and pointed to a wigwam covered with skins of different hues, fantastically arranged.
The young man, still clad as a Shawnee brave, left the lodge, and a wolf followed, and trotted at his heels.
But few braves were astir, as Fairfax walked toward the lodge of the old Medicine, in whose presence he soon found himself.
Okolona was bent beneath the burden of eighty winters, his hair was long and rivaled the snow in spotless beauty; but his face could not boast of a single wrinkle. Notwithstanding his physical condition, his limbs owned prodigious strength, and in his eyes the vestiges of golden manhood still remained—reluctant to leave one who trod the war-path when the Shawnee nation was a child.
As we have said, the Medicine had incurred the hatred of Tecumseh and Jim Girty; but the twain dared not to lift their hands against the old man, because he dealt in strange poisons, and was terrible revengeful.
As Mayne entered the lodge, the interior of which was ornamented with ghastly, grinning skulls, a smile played with Okolona’s lips, and when the young man threw his son’s bear-claw necklace into his hands, he embraced him, and his old lips murmured:
“My son, my Oonalooska!”
“Oonalooska says to his father, the Medicine of the Shawnees, ‘Help the pale prisoner,’” said Fairfax, and the old man’s eyes flashed with strange fire.
“Okolona will help Co Hago,” quickly returned the old Indian. “He would tear the pale Flower from the White Wolf?”
“Yes.”