CHAPTER VII.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, andsince 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 herselfupon 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 occasionto 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, buttwo bore human-shaped objects in theirarms.
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 Shaferin 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.