CHAPTER XI.

UNWELCOME VISITORS.

As Harry looked upon the dead body of his brute friend, he could but feel saddened and pitiful. It had followed him and Robsart for hundreds of miles, in obedience to that emotion of affection, which is a characteristic of the entire animal creation, and now it had given up its life to save him, who for days past had felt little but resentment toward it, for the mistake it had unwittingly made.

But little time was given the lad for indulgence in the finer emotions of his nature; for, while he stood leaning on his rifle, and looking down upon the mangled carcass, his ear, trained to unusual acuteness, detected the approach of something else, and he immediately raised his weapon and stood on the defensive.

“Another of those brutes,” he thought, “but there is no Speckled Beauty to help me this time, and I can not throw away a shot— Helloa!”

Well might he start with alarm, for just then the figure of an Indian warrior came out of the gloom, and walked directly toward him. Harry turned his head to see what chance there was to dart back in the darkness upon that side, but only to encounter two other red-skins fully as near as the first!

He felt that he was fairly caught, and he could do nothing but submit to the inevitable with the best grace possible under the circumstances.

The two red-skins halted but a few feet distant, and remained standing and motionless, as if to shut off any attempt to escape, while they left to the third the part of chief actor and spokesman in the business.

As Harry turned again and looked fully in the face of the latter, it struck him that he had seen him before. He was tall and well-formed, with a gaudily-colored blanket covering his shoulders, and which thrown partly back from his front, showed a large hunting knife at his girdle. In his left hand he carried a rifle, while the right left free was extended in greeting toward the lad.

“How you do, white pappoose?” he asked with a grim smile, and a perfection of accent that amazed the boy.

The latter could do nothing less than accept the proffered hand, although he did so with no little misgiving, fearing that it was only a prelude to some treachery upon his part.

But the Indian relinquished it the next moment, and then seemed disposed to act the part of an attorney conducting a cross-examination.

“Where you come from?” he demanded.

“From the fort, the other side of the mountains,” replied the boy, extending his hand toward the north-east in which direction the frontier post lay.

“You come all alone—come away here—nobody with you?”

“Nobody is with me now excepting you and your warriors,” said Harry.

“You come alone—who bring white pappoose from fort, away ’cross mountain?”

“The great hunter has been my guide and companion all the way.”

“Which his name?”

The lad hesitated a moment, not knowing whether it was prudent or not to use deception under the circumstances, but his questioner manifested some impatience at the attempt already made to parry his queries, and he concluded it best to reply truthfully.

“He is known as Old Ruff the mountaineer, although he has been more in the trapping business lately; there lies one of the animals that he tamed to be his dog.”

He noticed a slight manifestation of surprise upon the part of the Indian as he made this reply, and just then the impression came with renewed force that he had seen him before. Where could it be? Ah! now he recalled. He was one of the Blackfeet that he and Old Ruff had seen in the canoe, when scrutinizing Little Rifle through the field-glass.

_Could it be Maquesa?_ was the next question that came to the mind of Harry, when he took occasion at the same instant to throw a sidelong glance at the other two, in the hope that possibly he could recognize one of them as the chief.

But the scrutiny through the glass had not been complete enough to enable him to do this. He believed that all three of his visitors had been in the canoes at that time, but whether either of them was the Blackfoot for whom he and the old hunter had been so persistently searching for many days, and for whom the trapper was hunting this very moment, whether he was one of the three, he could only conjecture.

When the red-skin received the reply recorded, he was silent a moment or two, looking sharply down in the face of the boy, who felt somewhat embarrassed by the keen scrutiny.

“Where he be now?” he asked, lowering his voice, but keeping his eyes fixed upon him.

“He is gone—he went away to-day—he is down yonder at the foot of the mountain somewhere.”

“Why he go—why he leave white pappoose all alone for big bear to eat him up?”

Harry became uneasy under these pointed questions—the object of which he could not divine. He was unwilling to be more explicit in his replies, until he could be certain of what the result of such a revelation was likely to be. So he rather ingeniously took up the appellation the Indian had applied to him, resenting it with an assumption of indignation.

“Why do you call me a pappoose?” he demanded, straightening up. “I am no more a babe than are your warriors. I am a hunter and a man!”

This grandiloquent reply caused a very perceptible grin upon the faces of all three Blackfeet, who seemed to admire the spirit of the lad; but it did not divert the leader from the “line” of questioning which he had laid out.

“Where old hunter go—why he leave little brave white man?”

“He has gone off on a hunt, and when he gets through, I suppose he will return.”

Such a reply as this, it would seem, ought to have satisfied any ordinary mortal, and it would have done so, but for the fact that the red-skin was unquestionably upon the scent of something, and most probably knew a great deal more than he pretended.

“What he look for—big bear or big Injin?”

“He is looking for Maquesa, the great Blackfoot chief,” replied Harry, feeling there was no avoiding the issue; “he and I have been hunting for him for weeks, but have not been able to see him. Old Ruff thought to find him in his village, where he met him a long time ago, but the village is gone, and he knows not where he is.”

“Why he look for big Injin chief?”

“Because he stole Little Rifle, and has run away with him,” answered Harry, purposely using the masculine reference.

At this the Indian flared up, and replied in a quick, angry voice.

“You lie! Ruff steal pappoose from Maquesa—Maquesa take pappoose back from him.”

That solved the question that had been puzzling Harry during the last few minutes. He knew now that he was talking to Maquesa himself.

After following him for days and weeks in vain, and when about ready to give up the search as hopeless, the chief had come forward from his hiding-place and shown himself.

The lad still felt himself in a dangerously delicate position, and he never longed so much for the presence of Old Ruff as he did now that he had discovered the identity of his interlocutor.

What was the object of these three men coming from the gloom and surrounding him in the manner that they had done? What did Maquesa mean by questioning him so closely? And what was their purpose regarding the boy whom they had so completely in their power?

These were the questions which the lad put to himself, and whose answers caused him no little trouble and anxiety.

Maquesa, upon making the foregoing reply, gave some signal to the other warriors, and all three seated themselves upon the ground, as if they had concluded to spend the night with him. Without waiting for an invitation, Harry followed suit, and he played the part of a host by drawing the cooked meat from beneath the stone, where he had hid it from prying animals, and offering it to his guests. But all declined accepting it, and he placed it back again.

As the chief remained silent for some time, Harry concluded to put some questions to him, on his own account, hoping to gain a little information, but somewhat distrustful of the result.

“Old Ruff found Little Rifle asleep, and no one was near; he thought the pappoose would die, and he brought it away to save its life.”

“Old Ruff tell big lie! Pappoose in lodge—Maquesa close by—he come back, no find pappoose; get mad—burn down his lodge, and den go ’way. One, two, t’ree, good many moons, and he neber see her—t’ink she dead; den he hear Old Hunter hab Little Rifle—Maquesa t’ink _him_ de squaw pappoose, and he come ober mountain arter her—she go ’way wid him—Old Hunter try catch ’em, but he paddle too slow—can’t find Little Rifle—and _neber see her again_!”

It would be impossible to describe the intensity of interest with which Harry Northend listened to these broken utterances of the chief, and the closing declaration that Little Rifle would never be seen again brought him to his feet in the greatest excitement.

“Why do you say that Little Rifle will never be seen again? What have you done with her? Is she dead? What has become of her?”

Maquesa and the other Indians looked quietly at the excited lad, as if rather amused than otherwise at his flurry; but the chief showed no disposition to be as explicit in his replies as Harry himself had been. It was not until the question had been repeated that he answered:

“Little Rifle gone—Old Hunter and white pappoose neber see her ’gin!”

Had Harry Northend been certain that Maquesa had been the cause of the girl’s death, he would have sprung upon him as the mottled bear sprung upon the savage beast; but, by this time, he had managed to think a little, and his own common sense taught him that it was extremely improbable that the Blackfoot had done her any personal harm. Her history, as revealed by the slip of paper, pointed to a different conclusion altogether.

It was useless to attempt to question Maquesa, when he was not disposed to reply; but Harry took a different course, in the hope of reaching the truth in another way.

“Do you hunt for Big Hunter?”

The wily Blackfoot was fully authorized to grin, as he did, when he said:

“When Maquesa look for Big Hunter, _Maquesa can find him_!”

Suddenly the boy recalled the mystery which had puzzled him so long, and it seemed to him that the means of solving it might be now placed in his hands.

“Can you tell me, Maquesa, why it was that Little Rifle left me, as she did, and went away with you? You did not steal her, and why should she go without awaking from her sleep and saying good-by to me?”

The chief was about to answer this query fully and explicitly (a half-dozen words would have done it), when perverse fate interfered and closed his mouth again, with the all-important words upon his very tongue.