All at once, while the Indian still remained crouched on the floor, a hand struck the door, and in a firm tone Kate Blount demanded to know who was there.
“Segowatha, the war-wolf of the Pottawatomies, knocks at the pale-face’s lodge,” was the reply, in a pompous tone. “He is not alone; his warriors are about him, and through him they command the Englishman’s daughter to deliver over to them the Peoria dog, who kennels beneath her roof. We have tracked the Swamp Oak hither, and we seek the scalp of the Peoria dog, and not the Lone Dove’s. Let the pale child be swift to speak, for Segowatha’s warriors are impatient, and soon he can not hold them back from the work of the evil spirit.”
Silence followed the chief’s words. While he spoke, the hunted Peoria had risen to his feet, and now he stood with bowed head before the girl who held his life in her hands. Kate Blount gazed upon the demanded sacrifice, and twice she essayed to speak, but in vain. In the form of the young Peoria she beheld the only true red friend she ever had, and now to deliver him up to the torture seemed to her simple mind the hight of ingratitude.
“Speak, Lone Dove,” suddenly cried Segowatha, and he supplemented the command with a blow from his hatchet. “My warriors are drawing their weapons!”
“Let them draw and use them if they wish,” cried Kate Blount, starling toward the door. “I refuse to deliver the Peoria to his hunters, and more, I shall defend him with my own life.”
A yell of rage burst from the Pottawatomie’s throat, and he drove his tomahawk into the door.
That blow caused Swamp Oak to spring erect as an arrow, and he griped the slender arm of the trader’s daughter.
“Swamp Oak will die for the Lone Dove!” he said, with mingled determination and emotion. “Segowatha is full of lies. They seek the pale girl as well as Swamp Oak, for she is English, and in this war they strike all save the French. A yellow-skinned dog is with Segowatha; he wants the dove with golden plumage; he— Ah! the dog is going to whine.”
The Peoria’s sentence was broken by a voice just beyond the threshold, and the twain grew silent to hear what it might say.
“White girl, you are rash,” said the invisible speaker, in French. “You are selling your life for a dog’s. The Indians don’t want you—only the Peoria lout.”