“He rules this lot of red cut-throats, but he don’t rule the band around Cahokia—not by a terrible sight. Why, Oll Blount, they’d tear yer gal to pieces on sight, an’ ther Yaller Bloodhound knows this. Tharfore, he’s hid her away with the knowledge ov half o’ the red skunks with him now. Thar be some here to whom he daren’t tell his plans. Segowatha’s sons is with him.”
“Will they not find Kate?”
The father’s words were closed in a fearful tone.
“No; Bardue ain’t the man to stow her away under a brush heap, an’ then turn twenty Injuns on her trail,” answered the giant; “my word for it, they won’t find yer gal, Oll. It ’pears to me thet thar’s caves around here.”
“Oh, God,” groaned the anxious parent, “now that my dear child is in the sole power of a fiend, protect her.”
“He’ll do it, Oll; he’ll do it,” said Doc Bell. “He’s helped me out o’ many a scrape; but the Injuns ar’ comin’ back, madder nor thunder. I told yer they wouldn’t find the gal.”
Sure enough the savages, with disappointed visages, and fierce scowls upon the captives, were returning from a fruitless search, and with wild yells that made the woods ring, they gathered around the Yellow Bloodhound, clamoring for a pale-face’s blood.
“Blood! blood!” yelled the son of Segowatha, a young and fierce-looking warrior; “my father’s spirit calls for the red tide of the white girl’s heart; but now that she has gone—now that Watchemenetoc has borne her away—the spirit that stands before Little Wolf points to the three pale men, saying, ‘Skin them! skin them and drink their blood to me in the hollow of your hands.’”
His words threw a majority of the band into a frenzy impossible to describe. They yelled “Blood! blood!” like demons, and danced about the captives before the Yellow Bloodhound could find his tongue.
“We have sworn to bring the pale-faces to the uncovered grave of Segowatha, there to tear out their hearts and drink their blood,” he said. “Shall that oath be broken?”