Little Oskaloo Part 12

"Not so fast, my beauty!" he cried with a hideous smile, a mixture of sensuality and triumph. "I am convinced that I did not arrive a moment too late. That man was playing me false!" and he nodded at the dead. "He wasn't on the trail that leads to my cabin. I suspect, miss, that he got struck with your beauty, and thought that he would outwit his employer and make you his own wife."

Kate Merriweather did not reply. White faced and trembling, she stood before the outlaw, whose eyes devoured her peerless beauty, and from whose clutches she longed to escape.

"John Darknight proved to be a traitor, and your companion paid him for his treachery, though I guess that she did not suspect that she was serving me when she pulled the trigger. Perhaps you do not know me," and there was a grim smile on Girty's face.

"I do not, though----"

"Though you may have heard of me, you were going to say. I fancy that my name has reached your ears. There isn't a woman in the Northwest Territory who has not heard of me. My name is Girty!"

The settler's daughter uttered a cry of mingled terror and disgust.

"Simon Girty, the renegade?"

"No! his brother James--the worse devil of the two!" said the outlaw with a sardonic grin and a glance at the bewildered Little Moccasin.

"But you are not lost to every attribute of manhood, James Girty," said the captive in a pleading tone that might have softened a heart of flint. "There are hearts that bleed for me to-night. Do not deal with me as they say you have dealt with others; but restore me to my dear ones, and win the lasting grat.i.tude of all who love me."

Following hard upon Kate Merriweather's last word came a laugh which seemed the incarnation of fiendishness. The renegade's eyes seemed filled with the heartless merriment.

"Restore you to the boat? Let you go, after I have gone to the pains of getting John Darknight to guide you into my hands? Why, girl, you have not studied the character of Jim Girty."

Kate's hope fled away, and she looked without a word upon the forest beauty at her side.

"My father, let the white girl go," Little Moccasin said, venturing to meet the outlaw's flas.h.i.+ng eyes. "See! I have killed the traitor. He will never betray my father again."

"You served him right; but you were going to take this girl back to the river when I came up," was the reply. "She is mine, and the hand that is raised to tear her from me will fall in death. Come, my bird."

He drew the settler's daughter toward him, and as his eyes flashed their fire upon her cheek, Kate uttered a shriek and hung senseless in his grasp.

"Now go!" he cried to the mystery, as he pointed over her shoulder into the gloom of the forest. "Do not lift your rifle against me, for then you would never know who you are. Go! and follow me not. Don't cross my path too often!"

She saw the outstretched hand that pointed her into forced exile; she noted the murderous eyes that darted from her into the depths of the tarn, and with a final pitying glance upon the unconscious girl, hanging over Girty's strong arm, she obeyed. For the second time that night he had sent her from his presence.

"No man ever baffled Jim Girty!" he said, looking down into the white face which looked like death's own in the starlight. "For this moment I have plotted. Now I can desert the tribes to their own war, for she takes away all my warlike ambition. They may not see me in the next great battle. The hand of man shall not take her from me."

Then for a moment he studied his captive's face in silence, admiring its contour and matchless loveliness.

At length he started forward and stood over John Darknight.

"Quite dead!" he said with evident satisfaction. "That young girl saved me a bit of lead and powder."

Yes, the treacherous guide was dead. From that night there would be fewer b.l.o.o.d.y boats on the Maumee, and not a soul in the Northwest Territory was to regret Little Moccasin's aim.

Leaving John Darknight where he had fallen, a prey to the vultures and the wolf, Girty turned away, and, with his still unconscious captive, hastened toward his cabin.

The outlaw had achieved another triumph; but the avenger of blood was on his trail, and on a day memorable in the history of Ohio he was to expiate the crime which we have already witnessed.

CHAPTER XII.

A THRILLING INITIATION.

Oscar Parton did not resist when his captors drew him into their boat, which was paddled into the middle of the stream.

He saw that resistance would prove futile, for his struggle with the dead warrior had wearied him.

His captors were real red athletes, with great breadth of chest, and strong arms. They regarded him with much curiosity, and did not speak until the boat began to ascend the stream.

"The Blacksnake's spy!" said one, half interrogatively, as he peered into the young man's face.

His accent told Parton that he was a Shawnee.

"I am not a spy," was the reply, "I have never trailed the Indian, with a rifle ready to take his life."

The red men exchanged significant glances, and the youngest, a youth of eighteen, spoke:

"Pale face is a Yengee."[C]

[C] Yankee or American.

"I am an American," Oscar said, knowing that an attempt to conceal his national ident.i.ty would result in no good to him. "I have lived at the mouth of the Swift River,[D] lifting no arm against the Indian."

[D] The Maumee. So called on account of its rapids.

"But why is white man here?" asked the Shawnee.

Then followed the narrative of the flight of the Merriweather family, and the story of Kate's abduction. The two Indians listened without interruption; but at certain stages of the narration they exchanged meaning looks.

It was evident that they credited the story, for the young man told it in a plain, straightforward manner, embellis.h.i.+ng it with no rhetoric.

"White guide steal girl?" the young Indian--a Seneca--said, and the elder nodded his head in confirmation. "Him bad man. Decoys boats to the wrong side of river for the red man. Parquatoc no like him, for he makes war on women and children."

For several moments the savages conversed together in whispers, and in the Indian tongue, of which the captive caught but few words which he understood. His fate appeared to be the subject of conversation, and he waited with much anxiety and impatience for the end of the council.

Escape was not to be thought of, for his limbs were bound, and he would have sank beneath the waves like a stone if he had thrown himself from the boat.

At last the dark heads separated, and the young settler looked into the Indian's eyes as if seeking the decision there before he should hear it from their tongues.

But he was doomed to disappointment, for the red Arabs did not speak, though the one who had called himself Parquatoc guided the boat toward the sh.o.r.e.

Oscar thought that the youth's eye had a kindly gleam, and tried to make himself believe that no murderous light was in the orbs of his companion.

Parquatoc sent the boat to the bank with strong, rapid strokes, and it finally struck with a dull thud that made the light craft quiver. Then he severed Oscar's leg bonds, and the settler stood erect on the sh.o.r.e, ten miles below the scene of his capture.

His thoughts were of Harvey Catlett, whom he had left so unceremoniously, and who might think that he had deserted him to hunt alone for the stolen girl.