A BRACE OF DESERTIONS.
With one accord the fugitives glanced from Little Moccasin to the guide.
They felt that the twain had met before, and that the present encounter
was unexpected and startling to each.
"What do you know about this girl?" said the settler to Darknight. "It
seems to me that this is not your first encounter with her."
"I should say that it wasn't," was the reply. "I had hoped that we would
reach our destination without meeting her, for her presence among white
emigrants or fugitives betokens danger. She is the witch of the
northwest territory, and many is the boat that she has decoyed ashore to
the rifle and the tomahawk. She doubtless recognized me, for I once
pitched her into the rapids of yon river, and if she had her deserts now
our rifles would rid the territory of its witch, though I know it is
hard to kill a woman."
"Abel, she must not stay here if she is to betray us to death," said the
settler's wife, fast upon the guide's last words.
"Not so fast, mother," interrupted Kate Merriweather, with sympathy in
her dark eyes for the lone girl. "Remember that we have listened to but
one side of the story--Mr. Darknight's; now let us hear what she has to
say in her defense."
"Oh, she's a cute one, and you'll hear the sleekest story ever told in
these parts," the guide said.
But Kate Merriweather did not appear to have heard him.
"You have listened to the white man," she said to Areotha. "He has not
given you an enviable reputation. Now we want to hear what you have to
say for yourself."
Reassured by the white girl's kindly voice and looks, the accused maiden
stepped boldly forward, and said in a tone trembling but sweet:
"The pale guide does not like to see Areotha here, for she knows him. He
is more Wyandot than white man, and where is the boat he ever guided
that has not bloody planks? Areotha does not know. Did he not tell the
white man in his cabin that the red men would surround it and scalp his
family, and then right away offer to guide him to the Blacksnake?"
Abel Merriweather started violently. How did the forest girl know that
John Darknight had done this?
"This is insulting, and from a characterless girl at that!" the guide
exclaimed, advancing a step.
"Hear her through," said Kate firmly. "You have had your say; she shall
have hers. Now," to Areotha, "tell us if you are the witch he calls
you--tell us if you have ever decoyed the boats of our people to an
ambush."
"Areotha will speak boldly, though that man may repeat her words among
the Wyandot lodges, and the warriors on the trail. She is the pale
faces' friend. If the bee does not love to gather honey from the flower:
if the Manitou does not love his white and red children, then Areotha
has decoyed the boats ashore! She has spoken, and since she built the
first fire for old Madgitewa, her Indian mother, her tongue has not told
a lie."
Kate Merriweather looked up triumphant. She believed that Little
Moccasin had told the truth, for candor was in her voice, and innocence
in her soft eyes.
"There is an antagonism between your statements," Oscar Parton said,
addressing John Darknight. "They do not harmonize as I would like to see
them do."
"Just as if you expected to hear that cunning forest trollop----"
"Please be sparing with your epithets, Mr. Darknight. Do not forget that
you are in the presence of ladies," said the young man, interrupting.
"Yes, sir," was the tart rejoinder, accompanied with a quick, angry
glance at Kate. "Yes, sir! I will, for I am a gentleman; but I was
saying that you seem to have expected a confirmation of my truthful
charges from the accused herself. I know her but too well, and many a
poor white man and his little family have tasted death in the Maumee
through her treachery. But if you wish to test it, I shall not stand
between. When John Darknight's words of warning can be brushed aside by
the lies of a girl like that one, it is high time for him to betake
himself away. You will repent soon enough. Trust the witch and get to
Wayne, _if you can_!"
With the last word still quivering his lips, the guide shouldered his
heavy rifle and tightened his belt, as if bent on departure.
"How do you know that we believe the girl?" asked the settler, who had
not spoken for several minutes.
"How do I know anything?" was the snappish answer. "Do you suppose that
I am blind, and a dunce in the bargain? Warm the viper in your bosoms,
and, as you deserve perhaps, let it sting you to death."
Then the guide strode madly away, and reached the edge of the river bank
before another word was uttered.
The events of the last moment had thrown consternation into the little
camp, and the guide's hot words, mien, and his desertion, seemed to
paralyze the tongues of the fugitives.
But Abel Merriweather, white as a sheet and with flashing eyes, called
out in a tone that halted the guide on the top of the bank:
"One more word, sir!" he said. "John Darknight, I ought to shoot you.
Last night an Indian swam the Maumee and you met him at the water's
edge. There you proved yourself a low-bred renegade, a traitor to your
own people--the plotter of the destruction of my family. I ought to kill
you where you stand!"
The guide did not reply. For a moment he gazed at the speaker and heard
the clicking of four rifle locks. Then he burst into a coarse, defiant
laugh and sprang down the bank like a startled deer.
A few bounds brought him to the river, into which he plunged without a
second's hesitation, and dived beneath the surface.
Abel Merriweather and his friends, with ready rifles, waited vengefully
for his reappearance; but he came up far below and dived again before a
single weapon could cover him.
The whites looked disappointedly at each other.
"I ought to have dealt with him last night," the settler said,
self-upbraidingly. "He will join the Indians, and deal murderously with
us. God help my family."
The party, smarting with chagrin over the traitor's escape, returned
slowly to the camp, to meet a group of the whitest faces ever seen in
the forest.
Helpless in the shadow of an impending evil, Abel Merriweather's family
gathered around him, and for the first time since the flight from home
the strong man's heart sank within him.
The other members of the party looked about for Little Moccasin, but
Kate said that during the pursuit of John Darknight she had fled from
the camp without an explanation of her departure.