"Do?" said another voice, for Mark was speechless with rage, shame, and impotence, and Buckskin darted forward, grasping Cornplanter's uplifted arm, though the chief showed no immediate purpose to use his gleaming weapon. "Do? They should respect the voice of natur' and blood cryin' aloud!" Honest Buckskin had wakened suddenly, and alarmed at Mark's absence, sought him through the Indian village. "Look ye here, chief, this is a foolish boy, and he couldn't 'a' done what ye think, had he been in ever so much airnest. But he suspecks he's found his little sister that you and yourn took from his mammy's arms six year ago durin' the time o' fightin'. The great Seneca is just; and let him say, then, who's the thief, ef it comes to a matter o' stealin'."
The ferocity which had hardened Cornplanter's lineaments still threatened the offender in spite of the hunter's plea. But Ma-za-ri-ta, who had listened with shifting emotions chasing over her face, vainly striving to pierce the meaning of the words, now threw her arms about the neck of the chief, and spoke rapidly in the Seneca tongue. The Indian's stern aspect melted and took on its more wonted expression, in which there was something almost benignant.
"Go without harm even while it is night," he said, "lest the Senecas discover all, and sore mischief befall." He brought them their arms, loaded their wallets with food, and dismissed them. And as Mark turned before entering the forest, he caught a last look of Ma-za-ri-ta, watching their retreating footsteps with clasped hands and head bent forward.
It was about a week afterwards that Colonel Johnson received a visit at Fort Niagara in Canada, just across the river, which whetted his interest keenly. This whilom British agent of the Iroquois tribes still exercised a powerful influence over them, though their territory now belonged to the conceded limits of the new republic. To him they looked even yet for advice and authority. He recognized the Lyttes, mother and son (for the father was dead), and his feelings guessed shrewdly at the occasion as they walked up the esplanade from the jetty where they had landed.
"Well, Mrs. Lytte," he said, after the first look at her pale and working features, which were full of news, "I see you've learned something more."
"Cunnel, in the name of God, and for the sake of your own dear wife and children, you must help me now," the woman gasped, for her throat was too full. "Mark has jess come from Cornplanter's village, and he says for sure and sure it's little Nellie. An' she didn't know him! But, Cunnel, she will know the mammy that bore her and gave her suck, for I'll die of a broken heart ef she don't."
"We must trust for the best, my dear lady," said he, cheerily. "The first thing will be the child's knowing you. That clearly proven, the question will be as to Cornplanter. It will be a knock-down blow, but the Seneca has great qualities. He may set his face against it like flint, yet I shall be surprised if he thinks of self alone in the matter. And what idea did you get of Cornplanter?" he concluded, turning to Mark.
"Pretty good for an Indian," said Mark, moodily; "but ef he don't give up Nellie to mother, I'll brain him with his own hatchet, ef I die for it next minute."
"Well crowed, young cockeril," laughed the Colonel, "but we'll find better weapons than tomahawks. It's the heart and not the skull we've got to reach." There was no need to waste time, and quick outfit was made for the journey to the Seneca village, about eighty miles away.
Cornplanter received the message from the Indian runner, giving warning of Colonel Johnson's proposed visit, but with no further hint of purpose. Yet he felt a keen pang of foreboding. Stoic as he was, there was something in the air that mocked him with the notion of fate lying in ambush close at hand. As Ma-za-ri-ta afterwards recalled, the chief treated her with a clinging, pathetic tenderness during these days she had never known before. And finally, when he saw with Colonel Johnson the youth who had been his recent guest, and a pale-faced woman with questioning gaze that wandered and hunted like that of a mad-woman, it was no longer guesswork. It was as if a bullet had pierced his chest. The Englishman knew his man, and made a plain appeal with all the fling of that bullet.