"Bid her not, brother," I appealed to him. "Tell her I do not fear
to pay the price! And why should I escape if you----"
His granite features softened as his eyes met hers. But before he
could speak the scene shifted with startling rapidity. There was a
bulge in the ring of False Faces, and Ga-ha-no burst into the group.
Dressed in her uniform as Ga-go-sa Ho-nun-as-tase-ta, the kilt and
moccasins, she fronted de Veulle with eyes blazing, breast heaving.
"Do you seek now to buy the white maiden with this man's life?" she
stormed.
"You have no place here," he replied in the Cahnuaga dialect. "Go
away. You will make----"
"You shall not!" she defied him. "You have had your pleasure with
me. Now you would like to have a woman of your own color. You shall
not! I have been bad. I have forgotten the ways of my fathers. I
have betrayed a good man."
She threw a glance at Ta-wan-ne-ars, straining at his bonds.
"For that I am sorry, but it is too late!" she exclaimed. "White
maiden," she cried to Marjory, "do not listen to this man. He is
more wicked than I--and I am now a creature of Ha-ne-go-ate-geh!"
De Veulle waved his arm toward the attentive circle of False Faces.
"Remove the Mistress," he ordered. "She is hindering the torture."
The False Faces moved forward reluctantly, but Ga-ha-no acted without
hesitation. A knife leaped from a fold of her kilt, and she sprang
upon de Veulle like the wildcat to which he had likened her. He
retreated, and ripped out his own knife.
"Seize her, Murray," he panted in French. "She is insane."
But she closed with him, and the two knives sank home at the same
instant. Hers pierced de Veulle to the heart. His drove to the hilt
into her right breast, and she staggered back, coughing blood,
against the rigid form of Ta-wan-ne-ars, bound fast to the stake.
"Ga-ha-no--was not--worthy of--Ta-wan-ne-ars," she gasped as her head
slipped down his chest. "It--is--better--so."
No torture could have distorted his face into the image of frenzied
despair which it displayed as he strove uselessly to bend down to her.
"My Lost Soul!" he muttered. "Oh, Ha-wen-ne-yu, my Lost Soul! Oh,
Great Spirit, my Lost Soul!"
Marjory crept nearer to me, the horror in her face turning to pity,
the tears streaming from her eyes.
"The poor lass!" she cried softly. "The poor, brave lass!"