“I understand you, chief; nor will I gainsay the justice of your words, seeing that they are too much founded in truth.
But though born of the race you love so little, my worst enemy, not even a lying Mingo, would dare to say that I ever laid hands on the goods of another, except such as were taken in manful warfare; or that I ever coveted more ground than the Lord has intended each man to fill.”
“And yet my brother has come among the Red-skins to find a son?”
The trapper laid a finger on the naked shoulder of Le Balafre, and looked into his scarred countenance with a wistful and confidential expression, as he answered—
“Ay; but it was only that I might do good to the boy.
If you think, Dahcotah, that I adopted the youth in order to prop my age, you do as much injustice to my goodwill, as you seem to know little of the merciless intentions of your own people.
I have made him my son, that he may know that one is left behind him. Peace, Hector, peace!
Is this decent, pup, when greyheads are counselling together, to break in upon their discourse with the whinings of a hound!
The dog is old, Teton; and though well taught in respect of behaviour, he is getting, like ourselves, I fancy, something forgetful of the fashions of his youth.”
Further discourse, between these veterans, was interrupted by a discordant yell, which burst at that moment from the lips of the dozen withered crones, who have already been mentioned as having forced themselves into a conspicuous part of the circle.
The outcry was excited by a sudden change in the air of Hard-Heart.
When the old men turned towards the youth, they saw him standing in the very centre of the ring, with his head erect, his eye fixed on vacancy, one leg advanced and an arm a little raised, as if all his faculties were absorbed in the act of listening.
A smile lighted his countenance, for a single moment, and then the whole man sunk again into his former look of dignity and coldness, suddenly recalled to self-possession.
The movement had been construed into contempt, and even the tempers of the chiefs began to be excited.
Unable to restrain their fury, the women broke into the circle in a body, and commenced their attack by loading the captive with the most bitter revilings.
They boasted of the various exploits, which their sons had achieved at the expense of the different tribes of the Pawnees.
They undervalued his own reputation, and told him to look at Mahtoree, if he had never yet seen a warrior.
They accused him of having been suckled by a doe, and of having drunk in cowardice with his mother’s milk.
In short, they lavished upon their unmoved captive a torrent of that vindictive abuse, in which the women of the savages are so well known to excel, but which has been too often described to need a repetition here.
The effect of this outbreaking was inevitable.
Le Balafre turned away disappointed, and hid himself in the crowd, while the trapper, whose honest features were working with inward emotion, pressed nigher to his young friend, as those who are linked to the criminal, by ties so strong as to brave the opinions of men, are often seen to stand about the place of execution to support his dying moments.
The excitement soon spread among the inferior warriors, though the chiefs still forbore to make the signal, which committed the victim to their mercy.
Mahtoree, who had awaited such a movement among his fellows, with the wary design of concealing his own jealous hatred, soon grew weary of delay, and, by a glance of his eye, encouraged the tormentors to proceed.
Weucha, who, eager for this sanction, had long stood watching the countenance of the chief, bounded forward at the signal like a blood-hound loosened from the leash.
Forcing his way into the centre of the hags, who were already proceeding from abuse to violence, he reproved their impatience, and bade them wait, until a warrior had begun to torment, and then they should see their victim shed tears like a woman.
The heartless savage commenced his efforts, by flourishing his tomahawk about the head of the captive, in such a manner as to give reason to suppose, that each blow would bury the weapon in the flesh, while it was so governed as not to touch the skin.
To this customary expedient Hard-Heart was perfectly insensible.
His eye kept the same steady, riveted look on the air, though the glittering axe described, in its evolutions, a bright circle of light before his countenance.
Frustrated in this attempt, the callous Sioux laid the cold edge on the naked head of his victim, and began to describe the different manners, in which a prisoner might be flayed.
The women kept time to his cruelties with their taunts, and endeavoured to force some expression of the lingerings of nature from the insensible features of the Pawnee. But he evidently reserved himself for the chiefs, and for those moments of extreme anguish, when the loftiness of his spirit might evince itself in a manner better becoming his high and untarnished reputation.
The eyes of the trapper, followed every movement of the tomahawk, with the interest of a real father, until at length, unable to command his indignation, he exclaimed—
“My son has forgotten his cunning.
This is a low-minded Indian, and one easily hurried into folly.
I cannot do the thing myself, for my traditions forbid a dying warrior to revile his persecutors, but the gifts of a Red-skin are different.
Let the Pawnee say the bitter words and purchase an easy death.
I will answer for his success, provided he speaks before the grave men set their wisdom to back the folly of this fool.”
The savage Sioux, who heard his words without comprehending their meaning, turned to the speaker and menaced him with death, for his temerity.
“Ay, work your will,” said the unflinching old man; “I am as ready now as I shall be to-morrow. Though it would be a death that an honest man might not wish to die.
Look at that noble Pawnee, Teton, and see what a Red-skin may become, who fears the Master of Life, and follows his laws.
How many of your people has he sent to the distant prairies?” he continued in a sort of pious fraud, thinking, that while the danger menaced himself, there could surely be no sin in extolling the merits of another; “how many howling Siouxes has he struck, like a warrior in open combat, while arrows were sailing in the air plentier than flakes of falling snow!
Go! will Weucha speak the name of one enemy he has ever struck?”
“Hard-Heart!” shouted the Sioux, turning in his fury, and aiming a deadly blow at the head of his victim.
His arm fell into the hollow of the captive’s hand.
For a single moment the two stood, as if entranced in that attitude, the one paralysed by so unexpected a resistance, and the other bending his head, not to meet his death, but in the act of the most intense attention.
The women screamed with triumph, for they thought the nerves of the captive had at length failed him.
The trapper trembled for the honour of his friend; and Hector, as if conscious of what was passing, raised his nose into the air, and uttered a piteous howl.
But the Pawnee hesitated, only for that moment.
Raising the other hand, like lightning, the tomahawk flashed in the air, and Weucha sunk to his feet, brained to the eye.
Then cutting a way with the bloody weapon, he darted through the opening, left by the frightened women, and seemed to descend the declivity at a single bound.
Had a bolt from Heaven fallen in the midst of the Teton band it would not have occasioned greater consternation, than this act of desperate hardihood.