“What! dare you disobey, too?”
“I dare!” was the quiet response. “Colonel, if a majority of the Wyandots and the old Ninety-first say that Funk’s deed deserves death, we will submit. But one man, and he an Indian, shall not dictate in such a case as this.”
The mutineers applauded the sergeant’s words, and Colonel O’Neill stepped back, and gazed with horror into Splitlog’s face.
“I know what you want, colonel,” said Roy Funk, at this juncture, “and I don’t blame you, either, for you don’t pick up such a girl as this in the woods every day. Let the red-coats vote, and the Indians, too. If they say I deserve death, you may kill me.”
O’Neill looked up at the outlaw, and then turned to the sachem.
“I leave it to you, Splitlog,” he said. “Count me out; but Funk should live if he can cower such a man as you!”
CHAPTER IX.
SENT INTO EXILE.
Splitlog shrugged his shoulders and turned to his braves.
The lives of many brave men hung upon his savage caprices, and the silence that followed O’Neill’s last and bitter words seemed palpable.
The Wyandot hated, detested the British, Colonel O’Neill particularly; but he had sold his nation to the English cause, and he must not, in a single act, manifest an abatement of zeal. The colonel, under whose command Splitlog had already fought, had said that Royal Funk’s disobedience should be punished with death, and the Indian believed that he spoke to the king.