CHAPTER XIX.

A CHANGE IN AFFAIRS.

Jim Girty neither felt nor expressed contrition for his fratricidal deed. With folded arms he gazed calmly, almost triumphantly, upon his fallen brother, whom he believed dead--pierced through the head by his ball.

“I’ll teach you, Simon Girty, how to disobey me!” he at length hissed, in the silence that reigned after the commission of the dark crime. “You are my brother, but I care not for that, though I know that for this act I must fly the Shawnee nation before Tecumseh comes back. Ha! by heavens! did he move?”

He thought he detected a movement indicative of returning life in his brother Simon, and, throwing his rifle above his head, he strode forward with the intention of completing the deed of blood.

But the movement--the convulsive action of Simon’s arm--had been noticed by the savages, and several sprung to his side far in advance of his impetuous brother.

The foremost Shawnee, a chief of no mean distinction, jerked the renegade to his feet, and the eyelids parted, to display eyes wandering, like lost comets, in their gory sockets.

With clubbed rifle, Jim Girty reached the spot to be hurled to the earth by an Indian, and a moment later he found himself being swiftly borne to the prison lodge, his limbs bound with deer-sinews.

He knew that Simon’s heart, like his own, possessed no brotherly feeling, and that when the painted renegade came to his senses, he would wreak his vengeance upon his own lovely captive and himself.

On the damp floor of the prison-house Jim Girty found bitter food for reflection, and, with fate against him, he plotted not only his own escape, but the freedom of Eudora Morriston. He possessed many friends in the Shawnee nation; but not so numerous an array as his brother boasted of. For a long time the brothers had vacillated between friendship and strife, and James possessed secret friends who seemed to be active partisans of Simon. His brother was never beyond the vision of his red spies; and what James lacked in strength he gained in cunning.

When he heard his guard leave the prison house, he rolled himself to the door, and applied his lips to the crevice between the portal and sill.

“Who guards the White Wolf?” he asked in a low tone.

“Giangomah, the Black Whirlwind.”

Girty’s heart gave an exultant throb.

Giangomah had long been his secret friend.

“Who guards with Giangomah?”

“The Black Whirlwind is alone,” was the reply.

“Where is the White Shawnee?”

“He is in his lodge with a crazed head. He will know nothing till to-morrow.”

Jim Girty could not repress an ejaculation of joy.

“Then to-night Giangomah will help the White Wolf to escape,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good! The White Wolf and Giangomah will take the Pale Flower, and fly to the neutral Mingoes.”

“Giangomah is ready,” responded the chief. “When the stars come out, he will glide to the Pale Flower’s lodge, and kill her guards. Then he will bear her to the White Wolf, and we will fly to the neutral tribe. There the White Shawnee and Tecumseh dare not enter to harm us.”

“No!” cried Girty. “Among the Mingoes the Pale Flower shall become the White Wolf’s squaw, and woe unto the White Shawnee[2] when he crosses his path!”

In his lodge Simon Girty raved like a maniac. The ball fired from his brother’s rifle, had plowed a furrow along his temple, and deprived him of reason. Yet his return to a rational state was but a question of time, two days at the furthest; and then he would rise to vengeance against his brother, and his white prisoner.

But let us return to Mayne Fairfax and the old Medicine.

Simon Girty’s blow broke the old man’s arm, and rendered him unconscious. Mayne Fairfax dragged him into the interior of the medicine lodge, and soon restored him to reason.

“The White Shawnee broke Okalona’s arm,” said the aged Indian, examining the injured member; “but the old Medicine is far from the lodge of the Manitou. He will help the King of the Wolves baffle the White Wolf and his brother. Let Co Hago speak, while he binds Okalona’s arm.”

The old man threw himself upon his couch, while Mayne proceeded to dress the arm according to the instructions of its owner.

In time, the young man told the old Medicine that he desired the liberation of Eudora, and Okalona said that the coming night should witness her freedom.

“When darkness comes Co Hago can go and bring Oonalooska and the Lone Man to Okalona’s lodge,” said the Medicine, in conclusion, having been reticent regarding the course of liberation he intended to adopt.

No more opportune time than the coming night suggested itself to the young hunter, and the sudden change of affairs caused the fates to appear propitious. With Jim Girty a doomed man in the strong prison-house, and Simon a temporary maniac, Tecumseh absent, and Alaska, the mad queen, calm and unsuspecting, what better time could he have wished?

From Okalona’s lodge he returned to the double wigwam, from the door of which, Alaska had witnessed the startling scenes just narrated.

“Co Hago is worthy to be king of the wolves,” she cried, throwing her arms around Mayne’s neck. “Alaska saw him face the White Shawnee; but she did not go to his side with her children, for she saw that he would fight nobly, and conquer the bad white brothers.”

Mayne smiled at her words, and entered the lodge.

She followed, and threw herself upon the couch.

“Does Alaska know the Lone Man?” asked the young hunter, recollecting the emotion and singular words of the hermit when he parted with him on the knoll, the preceding night.

“The Lone Man is as a star to Alaska,” was the strange reply; “she can see him, but her arms are too short.”

The reply furnished food for the young man’s reflection.

It was evident to him, at least, that Alaska had known Hewitt in times when insanity was a stranger to her poor brain; but now, memory served her not--memory had deserted her with reason; but at intervals, as the reader has seen in the course of our romance, memory revisited her; but these visits were as fleeting as a sunbeam.

Again and again Mayne questioned her regarding the hermit, and her replies served to strengthen his belief, as given above. Perhaps she was the hermit’s wife, at least he thought that Hewitt half believed and feared thus, and an inward monitor told him that the coming night would behold the lifting of mystery’s curtain.

But he never dreamed the true and terrible revealment of that mystery.

He remained in the double wigwam until the dawn of twilight, when he left it unquestioned by Alaska.

Instead of making his way toward the knoll, where Oonalooska and the hermit awaited, with mingled anxiety and impatience, his appearance, he sauntered toward Eudora’s prison. Before the door sat the two guards, indulging one of their passions by gambling with little pebbles, after the sportive manner of American children, in the game called “Hull-gull handful.” The Indians were oblivious to all surrounding objects, and therefore the young man glided to the rear of the lodge unnoticed.

In a few words he acquainted Eudora with the plans, so far as he knew them, of rescue, and the maiden clasped her hands and prayed for the success of the attempt.

It made Mayne Fairfax happy to fill her heart with hope, and, elate with anticipated triumph, he left her, and hurried toward the knoll.

A few minutes later he stood before the twain, and without accident the trio gained the old Medicine’s lodge.