TREASON.
Winnesaw, the Pawnee girl, could not conjecture how Charley Shafer
had fallen into the hands of the thirty braves. She had witnessed the
departure of Tom Kyle and his red marauders, the previous night, and
the upper Pawnees had informed her that the young pale-faces were
with Frontier Shack, and under his strong protecting care.
The return of the renegade was not looked for until some time the
coming day, for the savages knew that the trapper would defend
his charges to the last extremity, and that the cabin could not
be attacked successfully until nightfall. Bent on solving the
mystery that enveloped our hero’s appearance in the Indian village,
Winnesaw did not immediately return to Lina Aiken, the Gold Girl,
but proceeded to look up some brave who had composed a part of White
Lasso’s party.
She saw that individual himself talking in low tones to a young
warrior. Both stood in the gloomy shade of a lodge, and all at once
Winnesaw grew into a statue not far away.
She felt that she was the subject of the Indian’s conversation, and
with every sense on the alert she watched the half-naked twain.
“Wolf Eyes will do it all?” she heard White Lasso say in a half
interrogative manner.
Wolf Eyes answered, “Yes.”
A moment later the Indians parted in the shadows, and Winnesaw glided
after the younger, who walked toward the lodge occupied by Mr.
Denison and his daughter, Mabel.
She saw him approach the guard with a boldness for which she was not
prepared, when she knew that a secret hatred existed between the
sub-chief and the renegade, and, parting the curtains, Wolf Eyes
stood in a listening attitude a long time.
Some dark project was ripening; the girl felt it no longer now--she
knew it.
All at once Wolf Eyes turned from the door, and, in the moonlight
that bathed his dark but finely-chiseled face, she saw a smile of
triumph, dark, sinister, triumphant, which a Lucifer might covet and
be satisfied.
He said a few words in an undertone to the guard, who looked up at
the moon, pointed to a wall of black clouds, and nodded his plumed
head.
Then Wolf Eyes walked away, dogged by the form of the Indian girl.
She watched him to the door of his lodge, saw him enter, and,
approaching as near as she dared in the stillness of the night, she
heard the overhauling of revolvers, and the clicking of a rifle-lock.
“What must Winnesaw do now?” she asked herself, with a puzzled
expression. “Shall she go back and tell the Gold Girl what she has
seen, or shall she watch the traitors?”
Several times she repeated these puzzling questions, and in the
end she slowly walked away. A few moments later she passed two
Indians, who lay before a large lodge, conversing in low tones, and
disappeared beyond the skinny door.
The fire in the center of the apartment was burning low, but it
revealed the form of Lina Aiken, stretched upon Red Eagle’s couch,
fast asleep and dreaming, with a smile on her ripe lips.
For several minutes Winnesaw stood undecided over the sleeping one,
and then, stooping, she gently touched Lina’s rosy cheek.
The Gold Girl started up with a frightened look.
“Why, Winnesaw, how you frightened me!” she exclaimed, smiling, as
she recognized the face above her. “I was dreaming, and you broke my
dream in the most bewitching part.”
“Winnesaw sorry to wake Gold Girl,” said the Pawnee maiden; “but she
may dream of spirit-land again when she has told her white sister
what she saw to-night.”
Lina Aiken instantly became on the alert, and Winnesaw smiled at her
eagerness, which drove every vestige of slumber from her eyes.
“What has Winnesaw seen?” she questioned, grasping the girl’s arm,
and speaking in a tone which caused the Pawnee to shake her head.
“Guards not asleep,” she whispered, glancing fearfully at the door.
“The Pawnee village is full of red traitors; they seem to outnumber
the flowers of the prairies. Winnesaw saw and heard them to-night;
they talk low, but are as bold as the Sioux.” And then she told Lina
Aiken about the conference between White Lasso and Wolf Eyes, and the
subsequent actions of the latter.
“What does it all mean?” asked the Gold Girl.
“Cheatery.”
“But who is to be cheated?”
“Kenoagla and Red Eagle.”
“Explain, Winnesaw; your astounding declarations have confused my
poor brain, I can not comprehend you; explain, I say.”
“Wolf Eyes loves the Gold Girl’s brown sister,” the Indian went on,
“and White Lasso’s heart beats in fire for--for you, my fair-skinned
sister.”
“What! am I beloved or rather coveted by another red-skin?” groaned
the captive blonde, a pallor flitting over her face.
“White Lasso wants Gold Girl,” said Winnesaw.
“But, girl, may all this not be a plot of Red Eagle’s planning? You
know he hates Kenoagla, as your people call the renegade, and may
not the two chiefs be in his employ to rob him of Mabel while he is
absent?”
Winnesaw shook her head.
“White Lasso and Red Eagle disputed a deer once, and since that time
their lips have been scaled to each other and Wolf Eyes is White
Lasso’s brother’s son.”
Lina Aiken did not speak.
“If they waited until the war-party returned, they could not tear the
pale-face girls from their captors,” continued the Indian girl, after
a brief pause.
“Then you think that they intend to carry out their plots to-night?”
“Yes.”
“What of my guards?”
“They are the chief’s friends; they too are traitors!”
“Then why did Red Eagle place them here?”
“He did not. The Big Medicine put them where they stand.”
“Would he betray Red Eagle?”
“He would.”
“What dark-faced treachery! I have fallen into a den of traitors, and
treachery fills the very air I breathe. But the boy?”
A blush suffused the red girl’s face.
“White Lasso will take him along if he goes to-night.”
Lina Aiken was silent for a long time.
“I wonder where George is!” she murmured.
“The other pale-face?”
The white girl started and it was her time to blush.
“Did you hear me, Winnesaw?”
“Yes; Gold Girl loves other pale boy.”
Lina’s blue eyes dropped to her feet, and the crimson mounted to her
temples, and tarried there until the Indian girl arose.
“You are not going to leave me now, girl?” said the blonde,
imploringly.
“Winnesaw go watch traitors; she come back soon,” was the reply, and
before the last sound died away, Lina found herself alone.
The Pawnee girl soon perceived that her footsteps were dogged by a
black shadow, and she walked directly to her lodge. After dropping
the curtains, she turned, and saw the black detective approaching
with the tread of the cat.
After watching him a moment, she turned and threw herself upon her
couch like one who would soon yield to the wooings of the drowsy god.
The moonlight stole faintly into her lodge, and a stray beam fell
across her face. She threw an arm across her cheeks in sleepy
abandon; but peeped out under the bridge of the elbow, and saw the
eyes that regarded her from the outside of the wigwam. One of the
Indian’s hands clutched a silver-mounted revolver, but she had no
occasion to use it, for the eyes soon disappeared, and she heard
their owner walking away.
She arose and gazed upon the retreating form.
It was Wolf Eyes; the peculiar gait, the crest of hawk-feathers,
proclaimed his identity beyond question.
He disappeared among the shadowy lodges, satisfied, no doubt, that
the object of his espionage slept suspicionless and sound.
The girl had completely deceived him, and when his form no longer
obstructed her vision, she snatched a rifle from a corner, and left
the lodge.
“The traitors shall not carry out all their plans,” she muttered,
with determination; “they may have the pale-face girls; but they
shall not carry the white boy away. The Great Spirit made his pretty
face for Winnesaw, and he shall not be taken from her now.”
These words meant much, and the red lips closed over them with
fearful emphasis, which told what a woman would dare for love.
Once the Indian girl thought of arousing the village, and thus baffle
the designs which were to be carried out when the dark clouds settled
over the disk of the moon; but when she recollected that desperate
men would do desperate deeds, and that the entire village swarmed
with plots and counterplots, and traitors of the deepest dye, she
relinquished all such intentions and resolved to do it all herself.
She hurried toward White Lasso’s lodge; but now two Indians guarded
it, and the chief was not to be seen.
She felt that she was suspected.
For several minutes she watched the lodge, but the Pawnee did not
return. She crept to the base of the structure, and heard the regular
breathings of a sound sleeper.
Charley Shafer was still there.
While she listened, the whinny of a mustang reached her ears, and
drove her to her feet.
The next moment she was hurrying cautiously toward the western
suburbs of the village.
The whinny had told her much that was startling, and presently she
saw an Indian holding three horses by the bridles on the banks of the
Pawnee Loup.
Treason was hatching, and the shell would soon be broken by the giant
offspring.
The girl crept near the horses, taking good care to keep to windward,
and all at once she dropped in the grass, and griped the silvered
butt of the revolver which Pawnee ferocity had torn from the hand of
some murdered emigrant.
It was near midnight now, and the darkest hour was at hand. The black
cloud wall had blotted the moon, as it were, from the heavens, and
but four stars, toward the east, still illuminated the skies.
The horses were fresh and eager to rush over the prairies, in the
face of the cool breeze, that came from the west. They pawed the sod,
and arched their noble necks, until the Indian curbed their ire with
his voice, and made them seem statues in the darkness.
Winnesaw watched and waited with bated breath.
The consummation of treason seemed never to dawn. But what seemed
hours to the girl were but minutes, and at last footsteps broke the
ghastly silence.
The click, click, of rifle and revolver were drowned by the noise of
the swaying grass.
Three forms joined the single Pawnee, but two bore human-shaped
objects in their arms.
The next moment two Indians vaulted to the mustangs’ backs, and the
steed-watcher lifted the girls to their arms.
“Now the boy!”
It was White Lasso’s voice, and Winnesaw was near enough to see that
a tight bandage covered the boy’s mouth, and that Mabel Denison and
the Gold Girl were similarly secured.
The Indian addressed by the chief caught Charley Shafer in his arms,
threw him upon the back of the third horse, and then leaped up after
him.
“Now good-by Pawnee Loup,” said White Lasso, waving his hand toward
the river. “We ride to the Sioux, and with them we’ll hunt the
buffalo, and fight the Pawnee if he comes for White Lasso and his
friends.”
Quickly, then, the mustangs’ heads were turned toward the north, but
before the spurs touched the scarred rowels, a pistol cracked and the
Indian who held Charley Shafer groaned and dropped to the ground!
The boy still retained his seat, and as the horses started forward,
a slender form sprung from the grass, and threw herself before the
horse’s hoofs. A hand clutched the bridle, and the flash of powder
drove the animal back upon his haunches. Then, before he could
recover, his rider was jerked to the ground, and the hand released
the bridle.
White Lasso and Wolf Eyes did not pause; but the chief turned and
sent a bullet after the Pawnee girl, who darted forward as the weapon
cracked.
She stooped and snatched her rifle from the grass.
“Don’t, girl, you may shoot Mabel!”
Charley Shafer’s hands griped Winnesaw’s arm; but he could not
prevent the shot.
A wild cry came back over the prairie, and in a ray of moonlight
which shot through a break in the cloud wall, they saw two forms fall
from a horse.
The remaining horseman dashed on.
The young twain rushed forward.
White Lasso lay in the grass quite dead, and Lina Aiken stood over
him, transfixed with horror.
Charley Shafer snatched Winnesaw’s rifle from her hand; but the next
instant he threw it away with a despairing cry.
Wolf Eyes and his beautiful captive had entirely disappeared.
The young adventurer staggered back with a groan.
Lina Aiken stole to his side.
“Poor Mabel,” she said; “they killed her father but an hour ago, and
now the second sorrow of her life begins.”
The boy gritted his teeth.
“I would have been with her, to comfort and save perhaps, had it not
been for that red-skin,” and, as he turned to Winnesaw, he hissed:
“Girl, I hate you; may Heaven increase that hatred!”
Winnesaw dropped her eyes and turned away.
“Don’t hate her, Charley, don’t! she has been very kind to me.”
“Hark!”
The Indian girl started forward, but paused and turned to the couple
again.
“The Pawnees come!” she said. “The clouds gather, but Winnesaw will
stand by the pale faces through the storm!”
The next instant they were surrounded.