Then he confronted the mute once more.
“The red girl met her mother, eh?”
The maiden’s eyes flashed with fire, as she nodded assent, and her hands clenched in vengeance.
“Don’t you see, Oll? Her mother, that infernal Snake Queen, caught her, an’ tore her tongue from her head. It won’t go well with that she devil now if she stalks within range of Doc Bell’s rifle. Curse me if I couldn’t cram her heart down her throat, although I have sworn never to harm a woman. I’m afraid I’m goin’ to break thet oath soon.”
The terrible condition of the beautiful girl before him had raised the hunter’s anger to the highest pitch attainable, and, as he clenched his hands, he fairly frothed at the mouth. When Doc Bell was mad, he was a terrible being, and for a minute he paced the floor of the cave swayed by the uncontrollable passion of anger.
“Girl,” he said, halting very suddenly before the mute, “I’m goin’ to hunt fur your mother, an’ by Heaven I’m goin’ to sarve her precisely as she sarved you. You must stay with my pale friend till I return, for he carries a red-skin’s ball in his body, an’ needs your nursin’. You will stay with ’im?”
The girl—Ulalah—nodded assent, and knelt beside Oliver Blount, asking with her eyes a thousand questions.
“I’m glad you’ve got some one to stay with you, Oll,” continued Bell, addressing the trader. “Now only keep quiet for I’m goin’ to bring Kate right here, an’ then we’ll see if we can’t git to Fort Chartres.”
The trader smiled joyously at this thought, but he could not obliterate the terrible doubtings which had within the last few hours traced deep furrows in his face.
The cave in which the trio had taken refuge from the sharp eyes of their foes, proved to be one of the several situated in the Illinois which the giant hunter had often visited, and among its gloomy recesses he had established a cache. To this, after speaking to the tongueless girl, he made his way, and soon returned to the fire with an iron kettle and several pieces of venison. A lot of this he divided between himself and the trader, while he converted a portion of the remainder into a broth for the victim of a mother’s vengeance.