“Wherefore is the spirit of my Father vexed that it disturbs my watch inside the death-lodge?”
The small rustling of the excited crowd ceased in every quarter.
They stilled themselves in a peculiar manner.
“Oh, ye sachems and Men of Wisdom,” he said, turning to the headmen gathered together, “come ye to the tepee of Negansahima and behold what ye have done!”
Slowly, as he had come, the chief trader of De Seviere turned about and passed out of the light. One by one, in utter silence, their faces changed in a moment into masks of uneasiness, the sachems and medicine men rose and followed. In the wavering shadows thrown by the central fire the big tepee stood in awesome majesty. Ridgar raised the flap and entered, dropping it as the savages filed in to the number of all it would hold.
“See!” he said dramatically.
Over the bier of piled skins which held the wrapped and smoke-dried figure of the dead chief there danced upon the darkness, eerie in pale-green living fire, the ghost of the crested and sweeping head-dress that he had worn in life.
There was never a word among them, but, with one accord, after one awe-struck look at the ghostly thing, they fled the lodge in a mass.
For several moments Ridgar stood in the darkness as those outside peered fearfully in, and, when the last moccasin had slipped silently away, he reached up and took down the fearsome thing, folding it beside the chief.
“We were wise together, old friend,” he said sadly; “would I had your knowledge and your power.”