Disappointed and chafed, the two chiefs returned in all haste to the
Indian encampment.
But few words had been spoken between them on their way from the hill.
A firm pressure of his uncle's hand was proof that Wacora, once embarked
in the impending contest, would remain faithful to its end.
It needs no speech among true men to establish confidence. Between the
two chiefs it was mutual.
As they neared the spot where the tribe had pitched their tents, an
unusual excitement was observable. Men and women were conversing in
little groups, animated apparently by the receipt of some startling
news.
The two chiefs at first imagined that the result of their interview was
already known; but on reflection, the impossibility of the thing became
apparent to them, and their surprise was extreme.
All at once they saw Nelatu hastening towards them.
The young man seemed ready to drop as if from fatigue. His looks told
that he was a prey to the keenest anxiety.
On arriving before the two chiefs, he was for some moments unable to
speak.
Words rose to his tongue, but they found no articulate utterance. His
lips seemed glued together. Drops of sweat glistened upon his brow.
The father, with a dreadful prescience of new sorrows, trembled at the
sight of his son.
"Nelatu," he said, "what anguish awaits me? Of what fresh disaster do
you bring the tidings? Speak! speak!"
The young Indian again essayed, but only succeeded in muttering
"Sansuta!"
"Sansuta! What of her? Is she dead? Answer me!"
"No; she is not dead. Oh! father be calm--have courage--she is--"
"Speak, boy, or I shall go mad! What of her?"
"She is gone!"
"Gone! Whither?"
"I have sought her everywhere. I only heard of her departure after you
left the encampment. Bury your tomahawk in my brain if you will, for I
have been the cause."
"What does the boy rave about? What does it all mean? Has the Great
Spirit cursed me in all my hopes? Speak, Nelatu. Where is your sister?
You say she is gone. Gone! Gone! With whom?"
"With Warren Rody!"
Oluski uttered a shriek of mingled rage and grief, pressed his hand upon
his heart, and reeling, would have fallen to the earth but for Wacora's
arm, at that instant thrown around him.
The two young men bent over his prostrate form, which his nephew had
gently laid upon the sward.
A few faint, murmuring words escaped from his lips; so faint, indeed,
that they were not comprehended by either son or nephew.
The frown which had gathered on his brow in his interview with Elias
Rody gradually gave place to a gentle smile. His eyes, for an instant,
rested sorrowfully on the face of Nelatu, then on Wacora, and were
closed for ever!
With that look had his life ended. The spirit of the Seminole Chief had
departed to a better land.
Wounded in his friendship, doubly wounded in his pride, cruelly stabbed
by the desertion of his own daughter and the weakness of his own son,
outraged as friend and father, the old man's heart had burst within his
bosom!
Tenderly covering the body with his blanket, Wacora stooped and kissed
the cold brow in silence, registering a vow of vengeance upon his
murderers!
Nelatu, stunned by the suddenness of the event, hid his face in his
hands, and gave way to lamentation and tears.
That evening the remains of their chief were interred in a temporary
grave, around which the warriors of the tribe, by their own consent now
commanded by Wacora, joined in an oath of sure and ample vengeance.
Coupled with their oath was the declaration that war and rapine should
not cease until the hill was again their own, and the body of their
beloved chief laid peacefully beside the bones of his ancestors.
That night the red pole was erected in their encampment, and under the
glare of pine torches was performed around it the fearful scalp-dances
of the tribe.
The white sentinels upon the hill saw afar off the fiendlike
performance, and, as around echoed in their ears their wild shriek, they
turned trembling from the hill, and cursed Elias Rody!