The hand that stole to Kate Blount’s in the gloom trembled like the aspen, and a terrible presentiment of evil crept to her young heart. She could not shake the terror off, and she knew that Swamp Oak shared it with her.
“Ha!” suddenly exclaimed the Indian, in a somewhat joyous tone, “Ulalah still keeps the fire bright for Swamp Oak.”
He quickened his gait now, and presently the turning of a curve brought them into an apartment quite vividly relieved by a fire that burned in the center.
The chamber was fit for the banquet hall of an eastern king, and the trader’s daughter was struck with rapture and awe when her eyes fell upon the myriads of shining stalactites that hung pendent from the arched ceiling, and the walls that reflected back, with ten thousand beauties, the glow of the fire.
At first she thought the palace deserted; but when her eyes became accustomed to the light, she, simultaneously with the Peoria, beheld a figure upon a mat of doe skins, near the bright blaze.
With a light cry of “Ulalah!” Swamp Oak shot forward, and stooped, with his inborn gentleness, over the motionless body of his young wife.
But the next moment he started back with a cry that drove every vestige of color from Kate Blount’s face, and, with the eyes of a madman, he stared at the form on the doe-skins.
The trader’s daughter could not move. Horror glued her to the spot, and her eyes continually flitted between the mad Peoria and his Ulalah.
Suddenly Swamp Oak shot forward, and lifted the Delaware girl from the couch, and then without a word bore her to the trader’s child, and thrust the cold, expressionless face into hers.
“Dead! dead!” welled from Kate’s lips, in horrible accents, and while she spoke she could scarcely believe that the beautiful being embraced by the Indian was a corpse.