“For that moment you must wait a long time,” said Wolf-Cap, addressing the leader of the Night-Hawks. “Strong’s is prepared to stand a desperate siege.”
“True; but its fate is inevitable. Card Belt, so sure as the sun rises this day, Strong’s fort shall be given to the flames, and its inmates, all save one, to the tomahawk. We are determined to depopulate ‘the fire-lands.’ Why man, four hundred Indians invest the fort at this hour. How can it escape?”
“It can! it shall!” cried the trapper. “But,” and his tone softened, “but you say that one person in Strong’s shall not die. Pray, Royal Funk, who is to be thus favored?”
“A certain woman—my lady-love,” said the outlaw, striking a ridiculous attitude, with his head thrown back, and his thumbs inserted into the sides of his hunting-frock just below the armpits. “What! didn’t you know I was in love, Wolf-Cap?”
“No.”
“Why, all these brave fellows know it. They’ve patted me on the back and said, ‘Go it, Roy.’ But the mirth of the whole matter is, Belt, that I’ve never told my love to her. She’s ignorant of my passion, and you see I must get her out of Strong’s so as to breathe it softly into her ears. Old Levi might object; but I generally marry orphans!”
Despite his anticipations, Wolf-Cap started when the identity of the outlaw’s love was declared.
What! should Royal Funk, the Night-Hawk captain, possess Huldah Armstrong?
Not, thought Wolf-Cap, if he could prevent him. But he was under sentence of death, and stood in the shadow of the Terror’s wing.
Half an hour after the capture of Wolf-Cap, the Night-Hawks started to join the besiegers of Strong’s fort.