Part 13 (2/2)
The two men required but a glance to detect the trick.
”That deed is false,” said Tranquil.
”False! That is impossible!” the Captain went on in stupor; ”If it be, I am odiously deceived.”
”Unfortunately that has happened.”
”What is to be done?” the Captain muttered, mechanically.
Black-deer rose.
”Let the Palefaces listen,” he said, majestically; ”a Sachem is about to speak.”
The Canadian tried to interpose, but the Chief sternly imposed silence on him.
”My father has been deceived; he is a just warrior, his head is grey; the Wacondah has given him wisdom; the Snake p.a.w.nees are also just; they wish to live in peace with my father, because he is innocent of the fault with which he is reproached, and for which another must be rendered responsible.”
The commencement of this speech greatly surprised the Chief's hearers; the young mother especially, on hearing the words, felt her anxiety disappear, and joy well up in her heart again.
”The Snake p.a.w.nees,” the Sachem continued, ”will restore to my father all the merchandize he extorted from him; he, for his part, will pledge himself to abandon the hunting-grounds of the p.a.w.nees, and retire with the Palefaces who came with him; the p.a.w.nees will give up the vengeance they wished to take for the murder of their brothers, and the war hatchet will be buried between the Redskins and the Palefaces of the West. I have spoken.”
After these words there was a silence.
His hearers were struck with stupor: if the conditions were unacceptable, war became inevitable.
”What does my father answer?” the Chief asked presently.
”Unhappily, Chief,” the Captain answered sadly, ”I cannot consent to such conditions, that is impossible; all I can do is to double the price I paid previously.”
The Chief shrugged his shoulders in contempt.
”Black-deer was mistaken,” he said, with a crus.h.i.+ng smile of sarcasm; ”the Palefaces have really a forked tongue.”
It was impossible to make the Sachem understand the real state of the case; with that blind obstinacy characteristic of his race, he would listen to nothing; the more they tried to prove to him that he was wrong, the more convinced he felt he was right.
At a late hour of the night the Canadian and Black-deer withdrew, accompanied, as far as the entrenchments, by the Captain.
So soon as they had gone, James Watt returned thoughtfully to the tower; on the threshold he stumbled against a rather large object, and stooped down to see what it was.
”Oh!” he exclaimed as he rose again, ”then they really mean fighting! By Heaven! They shall have it to their heart's content!”
The object against which the Captain had stumbled was a bundle of arrows fastened by a serpent skin; the two ends of this skin and the points of the arrows were blood stained.
Black-deer, on retiring, had let the declaration of war fall behind him.
All hope of peace had vanished, and preparation for fighting must be made.
After the first moment of stupor the Captain regained his coolness; and although day had not yet broken, he aroused the colonists and a.s.sembled them in front of the town, to hold a council and consult as to the means for neutralizing the peril that menaced them.
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