CHAPTER XVII.

A DUEL IN THE WILDERNESS—A STARTLING REVELATION.

Thus the savage and the Elder met, man to man, on equal terms, the Indian only having an advantage in the possession of his horse. Waltermyer and Osse ’o had succeeded in securing their horses, and retreating behind an abutment of the rocks, waited for the stormy interview which was sure to follow the contact of these fiery spirits.

Black Eagle rode close to the Elder with a reckless dash, that threatened to trample him under the hoofs of the half-wild steed.

“Where is the young pale-face?” he questioned, stooping his plumed head, and hissing forth the words in a half-whisper.

“That is the very question I wish to ask you,” replied the Elder.

“When your white-faced warriors crept like serpents among our braves and fired on them, she escaped,” answered the chief, sullenly.

“Well, that is, so far, your loss—no, not yours, for I have paid you well, and you know where the girl is. Take me to her hiding-place, or give back my gold.”

“Does the pale-face think the Black Eagle a fool?” answered the chief, with a cold sneer.

“I know that I was one, to trust an Indian with money,” was the reply.

“There was no trust. You gave the Dacotah gold, and he carried off the daughter of the pale-face from her father’s tent. He brought her, under a guard of warriors, to the mountain. Black Eagle had snared the bird; why did you not take her while she was fluttering in the net?”

“A pretty question, on my soul! Take her, when your men fought like so many devils.”

“Will the pale-face pay the Dacotah his gold?”

“What gold, you cormorant?”

“Did not he promise him plenty of yellow-dirt, when the white squaw should be given up?”

“Yes; but you lied. You concealed her.”

“Whose tongue is it that speaks of treachery? The pale-face was false alike to his own tribe and that of Black Eagle. Go up on the mountain and look. The warriors speak angrily, their wounds are fresh. Had the tongue but traveled the trail of truth, there would have been no mourning and blackened faces in the wigwams of the Dacotahs.”

“That is nothing to the purpose. Will you either give me back my gold, or produce the girl?”

“The gold that the white man asks for is hidden where no eye but that of the Black Eagle can ever find it. If the false medicine of the tribe at Salt Lake wants the maiden of the snowy skin, let him find her.”

The passions of these bad men were rapidly getting the better of their judgment. Each knew, by this time, that the other was playing a desperate game, and watching for some advantage. The Indian was resolved upon revenge, and securing the gold he knew the other had about him, and the Mormon felt that he was in a position of terrible peril.

While these two treacherous men stood glaring at each other, Esther Morse cowered in the undergrowth, panic-stricken by the sight of her mortal enemies. Waupee stood by her, pale, stern, and with glittering eyes, like a statue of bronze.

Waltermyer and Osse ’o stood behind a sheltering cliff that jutted, tower-like, on the plateau lapping over the face of the rocky wall, watching the scene with great indifference; both these men were too brave for any thought of peril to the woman they protected.

Esther Morse grew frightened as the two angry men moved nearer the place of her concealment, and starting up suddenly, placed her foot on a fragment of rock, in order to flee back into a more secure concealment. Her foot slipped, and she fell forward with a low cry.

Black Eagle know the voice, for he had heard its shrieks of pain before.

“Traitor! Out of my way.”

“Let the pale-face beware! The blood of the warriors of the Dacotahs cries aloud for vengeance. The thirsty earth is drunk with it.”

It required all the strength and influence of Waltermyer, to keep Osse ’o from interfering.

“It’s a fair fight,” said the frontiersman; “they are nothing but infernal reptyles anyhow. No, no; let them fight it out, for brutes as they are. It’s b’ar and wolf-hound; who cares which whips?”

The Mormon still advanced, intent only on seizing his prey; but the Indian spurred his horse between him and the thicket where Esther was concealed.

Black Eagle strung his bow, and placing the feathered shaft upon the well-strained string, drew it deliberately.

“Die, fool!” was the sneering response, and the report of the revolver awoke the echoes of the rocks.

“By heaven!” exclaimed the excited Waltermyer, forgetting his usual caution, as the horse of the Indian fell backward in his death struggles, for the bullet had missed the human form, and buried itself in the heart of the beast. “By heavens—forgive me, poor little Est, I couldn’t help it; but, the noblest brute of the party has fallen before the coward shot.”

It was the work of a moment for the active red-man to free himself from his steed, for even while he was falling, he had swung himself clear, and sent an arrow in return for the shot. For a moment the revolver pealed and the bow-string snapped, but without fatal effects, though both combatants were wounded. At length the pistol charges were exhausted, and the frayed, overstrained string of the bow broken, and the combatants mutually paused, glaring at each other.

The lull in the storm of battle was only for a moment, for the Indian hurled his keen hatchet full at the head of the Mormon. Fortunately, the aim had been hurried and uncertain, for it missed its intended mark, and shivered to pieces on the rocky floor of their battle-ground. The discharged pistol was still in the hands of the white man, and the Indian had his knife. In physical strength they were about evenly matched, but the Black Eagle had much the advantage in the training of his wild life.

“Now the fun is comin’,” whispered Waltermyer. “Thar they go like Kilkenny cats.”

“But think of their lives,” replied Esther, for the first time speaking.

“Think what would become of you, if either of them got thar hands on you.”

“But it’s horrible!”

“Pshaw! Thar lives ain’t of any more ’count than a sneakin’ cayote.”

The Indian woman sat with bowed head. She knew well that the man she had loved so passionately was engaged in a desperate encounter, but though there might have been something of that former love yet lingering around her heart, the education of a lifetime rendered it a duty to restrain her feelings. It was not for a woman to take part in the strife of warriors.

Hand to hand the fight was renewed. It was a series of rapidly executed movements. To strike and guard—to advance and retreat. But few were the injuries inflicted, and when, at length, the blade of the knife was broken upon the barrel of the pistol, and that weapon fell from the hand of which it was the sole defense, they stood with only the arms that nature had given them, bloody and fatigued.

From a long-protracted struggle the Indian rose, reeling with the loss of blood, and, staggering forward, he snatched his bow from the rocky floor, restrung it with his trembling fingers, and then groped, half blindly, around until he had secured the broken knife. Enough apparently remained for his purpose, for, kneeling, he attempted to sharpen it, and a smile of terrible meaning fitted athwart his dark face, as he felt of the edge. He regained his feet, and staggered up to the fallen white man. He twined his fingers in the long hair, wet already with the damps of death, and raised his arm on high. Esther Morse turned her head away with horror. Osse ’o involuntarily raised his shield, but Waltermyer burst through all restraint, and dashed forward, exclaiming:

“By the light of heaven, you shall not scalp him! A cussed, treacherous reptyle as he was, he was yet a white man, and shall not be butchered.”

Yet, quick as Waltermyer’s movements had been, Osse ’o glided in before him, and Waupee, breaking through all bonds, followed, leaving the white girl alone.

Black Eagle heard them coming. He turned upon them, and met the man, whose intended murder lay on his soul, face to face. With a fierce cry he loosened his hold upon the Mormon, and tottered toward the verge of the cliff. Then, a true woman still, the discarded wife dashed forward to save him with an outcry of passionate despair. She was too late.

For a moment, long enough to fix his arrow on the string, he retained his footing, sent the shaft, even in his death agonies, flying through the air, and, with the death-song of the Dacotahs ringing from his lips, fell backward into the dark valley.

Waltermyer, busy in examining the body of the Mormon, to see if any thing of life remained, had not seen the action. He was intent only on the dead man before him, for the spirit had passed to its final accountability.

“Waal, waal,” he said, almost pitifully, for, with death, all his feelings changed, “I never knew any good of you, and, for a white man, you were most onacountably undesarvin’. But I reckon you must have had a soft spot in your heart, somewhar, and I’m sorry now that I didn’t kinder take care of you. It was onnatural, that’s a fact. But I saved your scalp, anyhow, and that’s some comfort. More ’an that, it shan’t be said that I left you without a grave. No, no, I’ll take good care that you don’t lie here, for the wolves to snarl over. Osse ’o, Osse ’o, I say; whar are you, man?”

Waltermyer started to his feet, in sudden terror, for the usually musical voice was changed into a hoarse whisper.

“What’s the matter with you, man?” he questioned, as he saw that the lithe steps of the red-man had grown slow and unsteady. That the flashing eye was dim, and that both hands were pressed upon his side, as if to still some great pain.

“Nothing, nothing. Don’t tell the daughter of the pale-face,” was the whispered reply, and Osse ’o fell into the outstretched arms of Waltermyer.

“By heaven! if there is not an arrow stickin’ in his side.”

A shriek rung from the bushes, and Esther Morse sprung to his side and knelt down by the wounded man, while Waupee, with the nimble and soft fingers of an Indian, used to such occurrences, was busy unfastening the garments.

“Don’t! don’t!” came struggling from the ashy lips of the sufferer. “Let me die.”

“If I do, may I be shot,” exclaimed the frontiersman, and his strong hands quickly tore away the fastenings.

“By heaven! It’s a white man!” he shouted. “No red-skin, but just as white as your’s, gal. Look and see!”

Waupee carefully drew out the arrow-head and stanched the blood.

“It is a hunting-arrow, not a poisoned one for war,” he continued, as she held it up to Waltermyer.

Esther saw the white shoulder glowing from under the torn hunting-shirt, and knew, with a thrill of joy, that the man whom she had so long taken for a Dacotah was of the same complexion as herself. Even then she remembered the situation in which she had been placed with him, and her cheek, neck and brow burned again. Ah! how well she remembered many an act and word, thought but lightly of at the time, that now identified his claim to birth and education; but she had no time for these thronging fancies. Would he live? A fervent prayer went forth from her heart, then nerving herself for the task, she strove to assist in dressing the wound. Gently, but firmly, she was repulsed.

“The children of the Dacotahs,” murmured Waupee, “are learned in the ways of the medicine. The hand of the pale-face is like the aspen-leaf in the breath of the storm, and her heart is faint as the dove.”

“But, will he live?”

“Life is the gift of the great Manitou.”

“Yes, yes; don’t trouble your pretty heart about it, beauty, he’ll soon be around again,” exclaimed Waltermyer, holding the wounded man in his powerful arms, and bearing him to the shade of the bushes, tenderly as a mother would have carried her first-born.

Waupee succeeded in stanching the blood, and then, from the neighboring woods, gathered healing herbs, and carefully bound them on the wound, while the white girl lifted Osse ’o’s head from the hard rocks, and pillowed it in her lap. Waltermyer departed for the woods, and after a long absence, returned, bringing with him pine-branches and curving strips of bark, sufficient to make a shelter, and these, in the hands of Waupee, soon were framed into an almost fairy-like bower. When Osse ’o fell asleep, in his fragrant shelter, Waltermyer sat smoking his pipe at the door of the lodge, silently at first, but, ere long, his restless spirit broke forth in words:

“Waal; I did the best I could for the Mormon.”

“You buried him, then?” asked Esther, solemnly.

“Yes, deep and well. I piled the stones up, so as to know the place again ef I ever should see any of his relations, and they wanted to find it.”

The Indian woman—the poor, brutally-abused und suddenly widowed wife—looked steadily at him with her large, black eyes, but said nothing. Waltermyer fully understood the look, and replied:

“Yes, yes, Waupee, I did the same for the Black Eagle. Perhaps neither of them would have done it for me; but I can’t help that. I made him a grave for your sake, and fixed it up, Dacotah fashion, down by the spring. I knew their customs, and thought every one of the tribe would like to add a stone to the pile when they passed; so I fixed it in just as handy a place as I could.”

A look of fervent gratitude passed over the face of the widow; then arising, solemnly, she covered her face in her hands, and slowly walked away. Esther would have accompanied her, but Waltermyer laid his hand on her arm, and whispered:

“Let her go alone. To-night she will watch by the grave. It’s a part of their religion, I allow. And now you go to sleep, while I watch.”

“No, I! He watched me when I slept last night; why should I not do the same for him when he so much needs my care?”

“Waal, it’s woman’s business to take care of the sick, I s’pose; but you don’t look over strong. Thar hain’t many roses a-blossomin’ on your cheeks, but they will come again in time; and you couldn’t take care of a braver or a better one, if you war to search the world over.”

“You know him, then?—tell me his history.”

Waltermyer obeyed her, and revealed all that he knew of the wounded man.

The night passed, and with it all apparent danger; for now Osse ’o was able to sit up and converse.

“Why does Waupee stay so long?” asked Esther, whose true womanly heart had sorrowed deeply as she thought of the Indian widow sitting by that lonely grave in the dark hours.

“I will go and see,” replied Waltermyer.

“And I, if our patient can spare us for a moment,” said Esther, with a smile that would have amply repaid the semi-Indian for a far more dangerous wound.

“Yes,” was the whispered response. “I have known her well; she was a very queen for goodness, virtue, and truth among the Dacotahs.”

They found the Indian widow stretched upon the grave of her late lord and master. They thought that, worn out with suffering and watchfulness, she had cast herself down to sleep; and so she had. The poor woman had fallen into that sleep which knows no waking. She had passed from earth calmly and apparently without a struggle, for no traces of pain lingered on the pale-face—upturned, as if looking to the blue heaven above. With a broken heart she had followed her husband to the happy hunting-grounds, faithful even in death. By his side she was buried; and as the kind, tender-hearted frontiersman piled the last stone upon the rude monument that was to mark her grave, his eyes filled with tears, and he hoarsely whispered:

“Poor woman! May she be happier in heaven than she ever was on earth. I didn’t think I should ever have cried over a red-skin; but thar’s no use in denyin’ it now, and if she had lived. Waal, waal, she’s at rest.”

In sorrow and sadness of heart they returned to the plateau. In the freshness of that dewy morning, with Osse ’o again mounted on the snowy steed, for Esther would have it so, herself mounted on “Black Star,” and Waltermyer walking silently forward, they left the mountain and the lonely graves, never to tread again those rocky and dangerous fastnesses.