“Wal,” said the hunter, calmly, “I hup I see you. It’s been a long time since we’ve met. I b’lieve I war a prisoner in yer town then, and it fut’hermore occurs to me that I left that old sorcerer, Conestoga, whom you called yer husband, as dead as Indians ginerally become. Ye couldn’t keep Doc Bell in the ring, eh, Coleola!”
The Snake Queen remained unmoved until the hunter uttered the name of his victim. Then a cry of rage parted her lips and she stepped nearer, her eyes spitting their anger into Bell’s face. But, the old hunter finished his sentence undaunted, and returned her insane glare with a look of calmness.
He had raised her anger to the highest pitch attainable, and when he saw her long knife flash from beneath the tunic which habited her giant frame, he gave himself up for lost, and smiled upon the deadly blade.
With a muttered anathema the Snake Queen threw the steel aloft, seeing nothing but the slayer of her lord, forgetting, in her eagerness to drink his blood, the tortures she could inflict upon him; and contrary to her vengeful resolves, decreeing to him a comparatively painless death.
The rattlesnakes writhed around the tawny arm thrown aloft, and seemed intent upon reaching the blade held far above her head—the blade that trembled on the scent of death. For a second the mad-woman glared at the hunter without striking, and then she stepped back to deliver the blow with a tiger-like spring.
The Indians saw this, and held their breath. The other captives could not avert their eyes from the doom of the giant, their companion in misfortune.
“White dog, die!” shrieked Coleola, and like the panther darted upon her victim.
But the knife never reached the hunter’s heart; an arm as red as that of the would-be murderess’ interposed, and when she gazed upon the intruder, she beheld him planted as firmly as the oak between her and the hunter!
It was Nehonesto!
“The Snake Queen must reach the big man’s heart through Nehonesto’s,” he said, calmly returning the flash of the baffled woman’s eyes.