IN THE HANDS OF FATE.
The Indians, consisting of representatives from each of the avenging
nations, had reached the top of the bank in less time than we could
record the movement, and gained perceptibly upon the flying whites from
the first.
The trio kept close together, and ever and anon glanced backward to
behold their dusky foes nearing them with a rapidity which betokened
swift doom.
Still the wood stretched before them, and no covert, no natural
stronghold in which they might attempt a defense presented itself; and
no succoring volley burst upon their ears. Had they been as fresh as
their pursuers were, they might hope to elude the red hands; but the
respective tramps from Fort Chartres and Cahokia had fatigued them,
and, even when flying for life, they felt the terrible lack of strength.
“They’re going to catch us!” said Bob Somerville, the young scout,
glancing over his shoulder at the howling legion.
“If we say so--yes,” said the giant. “What do you say, Blount? As for
myself, I’ll never throw down my rifle, an’ cry quarter to that troop
of man-skinners. But you have a daughter, an’ as they bear you but
little hatred compared to that which they bear old Doc Bell, p’r’aps
you’d better give up--you an’ Bob, here.”
“What! I surrender to them!” cried the young scout, shooting a look of
indignation at the giant at his side. “Never! I’m going to stay with
you, Doc. Let us run on!”
On, still on they went, and all at once the big hunter cried:
“Tree! they’re goin’ to shoot.”
Instantly the trio sprung to trees, and simultaneously with their
action a score of rifles cracked. The leaden pellets whistled about
them like hail, and, staggering from the giant oak, which his hands had
barely touched, Oliver Blount dropped over the trunk of a decayed tree.
“Let ’em hev it, Bob,” cried the giant. “We might as well die here as
any place. They’ve finished Oll, the red dogs hev, nor shall one feel
the pain of skinning.”
As the hunter finished, he thrust his long-barreled rifle forward,
and the young sub-chief who was bounding toward Blount with uplifted
tomahawk, reeled with a death-yell, and fell dead, as a comrade, a few
feet in his rear, met a like fate by the ball from Bob Somerville’s
rifle.
“Now load, boy, load for yer life!” shrieked the giant, snatching the
horn from his side, and with lightning rapidity proceeding to load his
trusty rifle. “Beavers! Blount’s not dead. Brave fellar! he’s goin’ to
give them a blister!”
The hunter in his rough manner had spoken truly.
The sorely-wounded trader with closed teeth and avenging eyes, had
raised himself on his knees, and thrust his weapon over the log--his
invulnerable bulwark. The twain behind the trees watched him as they
reloaded their guns, and when they saw the old man’s finger press the
trigger they exposed their bodies enough to see an Ottawa brave spring
into the air with a death-shriek.
“Well done, Blount!” cried Bell, as the trader looked up with a smile
of satisfaction, and then sunk behind the log to reload.
The Indians knew that their foes could recharge their weapons before
they could engage in a hand-to-hand conflict, and, therefore, after
Blount’s death-shot they sought the protection of trees until they
could draw another volley from the whites.
With the agility so characteristic of the red-man, they glided from
tree to tree, gradually approaching their victims and trying to get in
their rear.
“We’re their meat, Bob,” hissed Doc Bell. “It’s no use disputin’ _thet_
point. Ef I only had that infernal Williamson hyar! But, I finished
him; that’s some consolation. Ha!”
With the exclamation, the giant’s rifle touched his shoulder, and a
yell told that some ill-fated red-man had exposed his body to the
death-scout’s aim. An instant later the weapons of the other whites
spoke their death-tidings, and the chorus of yells that quickly
followed would have done credit to the choir of the lost in Pandemonium.
The Indians to a man shot forward; and with clubbed rifles and knives
griped between their teeth, Doc Bell and his companion sprung from the
trees, and faced the red horde with the look of men whose lives must be
purchased at a terrible cost.
Oliver Blount seemed to forget for what he had to live, and to have
imbibed the spirit of his companions; for, despite his wounds, which
caused his lips to twitch with acute pain, he threw himself over the
log with drawn tomahawk.
“Come on, devils!” he yelled at the savages. “Come on, I say, and greet
the edge of trader Blount’s hatchet!”
The Indians greeted his speech with derisive yells, and when they had
almost reached the desperate men, who had braced themselves for the
battle to the death, a solitary rifle cracked, and Big Fox-Fire, the
giant of the Delawares and the leader of the avengers, sunk to the
ground without a groan.
Awe-stricken by the mysterious shot the savages executed an abrupt
halt, and their eyes, staring upon some object beyond the whites, drew
the attention of the latter thither.
Near fifty yards behind them, and upon the trunk of a newly-fallen
tree, stood the slayer of the gigantic Delaware; and when the eyes of
the hunted whites fell upon the avenger, a cry simultaneously parted
their lips:
“’Tis Kate!”
Yes, in the person of the slayer, the form of Kate Blount was easily
recognizable, and with a light cry which reached her father’s ears, she
bounded forward.
“Back, Kate, back!” shouted Oliver Blount, waving her aloof. “You can
escape the fiends!”
But she did not heed his voice, for she came on, faster than ever,
and with a joyful cry, in the presence of the painted denizens of the
wood, she sunk upon the bosom where she had pillowed her head so oft in
happier days.
“Kate, my own Kate!” cried Oliver Blount, in a voice tremulous with a
father’s emotion; and then he looked through his tears to the giant as
if to say: “Doc Bell, we’ll live for my daughter.”
The giant understood that mute appeal. He dropped his rifle to the
ground, and caused the blade of his scalping-knife to quiver in the
bark of the tree.
“I’m goin’ to live fur the gal--fur Kate,” he cried, glancing at his
protege, who had followed his example. “That gal ar’ too brave to die,
an’ suthin’ might turn up.”
“Yes, yes, we’ll stand by Kate Blount, so long as we have life left,”
said Somerville, and his lustrous eyes, dimmed by the meeting of father
and child, wandered to the beautiful owner of that name whom he had
long in secret, and late, openly, loved.
Oliver Blount released his child after a moment’s fond embrace, and his
action broke the spell which had bound the rude red horde.
They started forward, not with uplifted weapons, but with empty hands,
to take possession of their prisoners, for they could not mistake the
meaning of the quivering knife and grounded rifle.
“Yes, we’re yours,” said Doc Bell, addressing the Indians, as he
held forth his arms to receive the twisted sinews; “an’ ye may thank
yer Manitou that this gal came when she did. She’s saved many a life
to-day, she hez; an’ we’re goin’ to stan’ by her through thick an’
thin. Come, Bob, don’t pervoke the Injun; act decently, ef it ar’
ag’in’ the grain. ’Tain’t the first time we war tied.”
The young scout was about to strike a fierce young Ojibwa who had spat
in his face, but the giant’s words unclinched his hand, and he told the
red-man that they would meet again.
The Indians made no noisy demonstration over the surrender of the
whites, but their lowering looks boded ill for their captives; and Doc
Bell’s acute senses heard the younger warriors whispering about dull
knives, and he saw them mimicking the flaying process with fiendish
contortions of face and form.
But he did not communicate his observations to his fellow-prisoners; he
would not horrify them with their doom.
The pale-faces were soon bound, and the victors turned their faces
toward Cahokia creek again.
The trader found that the bullet in his thigh did not impede his
progress, and flinging pain to the winds, he managed to keep pace with
the savages.
Big Fox-Fire and the fallen braves were borne before the party, and
when the spot where the council had convened the preceding night was
reached, the band halted, and the giant looked around for the haunted
trader.
But that personage was not visible.
“He drowned in the stream!” he muttered, to himself. “Well, he is out
of the world at any rate, an’ I calculate as how the world is the
gainer.”
Almost immediately after the halt the captives were bound to separate
trees, and the savages coolly proceeded to discuss their morning meal.
“I’m as hungry as a wolf!” growled Doc Bell, throwing a wistful look
upon the huge slices of venison that surmounted the sticks which the
Indians held over the blaze. “I could gnaw my moccasins, an’ get a good
meal out ov an Injun’s scalp-lock. Ha! here’s comes a slice. Beavers!”
An Indian near six feet in hight, and as straight as an Assiniboin
arrow, whose raven hair covered his otherwise naked shoulders, had
risen from the fire, and was approaching the hunter with a huge slice
of roasted venison.
Doc Bell had noticed him before he left the blaze, and he felt assured
in his own mind that he had encountered that stalwart form before. But
he never knew a savage of such particular build, who owned such a mass
of hair. A moment later, when the Indian wheeled and displayed his
features to the hunter, the exclamation which concluded his mutterings
escaped his lips.
“The pale-face is as hungry as the nestlings whose mother is no more,”
said the Indian, pausing before the giant, whose sturdy eyes were
filled with wonder and amazement.
“Hungry!” he cried, in an overtone; “I should reckon I was hungry,” and
then his voice dropped to a whisper. “Nehonesto, I could eat you, hair
an’ all.”
The hunter’s words threw a strange light into the Indian’s eyes.
He stepped forward quite impulsively, and his right hand jerked
the unnecessarily broad deer-skin strap of his paint-bag from its
accustomed position on his tawny breast. A second later his hand
dropped to his side, but the giant had caught sight of a crescent star,
again hidden by the strap.
Then, in silence, Nehonesto, as Doc Bell had styled the Indian,
satisfied his hunger, and in like manner his fellow-captives were fed.
“There goes a friend!” murmured the hunter, as Nehonesto returned to
the fire, without having spoken a hopeful word. “I thought the fellow
dead, an’ it’s the Almighty’s doin’s thet we’ve come together again.
Wonder where Tarpah is, an’ Mohesto an’ Otter Eyes, an’ the rest of our
brotherhood? Thank God for Nehonesto, at least. But, suppose the Injuns
should take a notion to finish us to-day, what could Nehonesto do?” and
away down in his heart he answered, “Nothing!”
But he kept his eyes riveted upon the Indian, who never deigned him a
glance, but ate his venison in stolid silence among the congregation of
chiefs.
The hunter would fain have bidden his companions hope; but he was too
widely separated from them to converse in whispers, and, besides, an
Indian stood between him and them. A word might seal his doom.
For two long hours the chiefs were holding low converse, and the giant
hunter saw Nehonesto among them.
What would the Indians do?
All at once a wild yell came from the cliff on the opposite side of the
deep creek.
Every eye turned to the elevated spot, and upon the very edge of the
declivity stood a red Amazon, whose aspect was most terrible.
“Who guided that she-devil hither?” cried Doc Bell. “I know her an’
she knows me, an’ to-day I’d sooner meet a thousand mad wolves than
Coleola, the Snake Queen of the Delawares. Thar’ll be suthin’ dreadful
to pay now. Nehonesto, where are you?”