“Brown Eyes purty squaw!” he said. “Wide Foot, the squaw of Crazy Snake, is old; he take a young squaw, who is white. The white men will be killed. But the Brown Eyes she will live.” The statement roused her as nothing had done since the death of her father. “I would rather die!” she said. “I will kill myself rather than become your--your wife!” She half rose, and in another second would have leaped into the stream; but he stretched out his long right arm with a quick motion, catching her by her hair, which had come unbound in her struggles with him, and jerked her flat in the bottom of the canoe. “Ugh!” he grunted. “Brown Eyes fool! Brown Eyes drown herself? No, no! Brown Eyes be the squaw of Crazy Snake.” She lay there, in the bottom of the canoe, cowering. He put the paddle into the canoe, and then lifted her to a seat, where she sat weakly, regarding him with looks of terror and loathing. Then he tried to make her see that he was doing her a great favor; for he declared again that while all the white men were to be killed, she was to be permitted to live, and would become the squaw of a great chief. She failed to see the beauty of the picture he tried to draw. She preferred death to that. A little farther down the stream Crazy Snake ran the canoe ashore, where he tied it, after sinking it. She had been compelled to get out, and sat on the bank watching him sink and conceal the boat. “Brown Eyes go on!” he said, coming up to her. It seemed that her terror could go no further; but apparently it did, when from the bushes just ahead there appeared now another Indian. Crazy Snake showed surprise, thus evidencing that the appearance of this Indian was unexpected even by him. The Indian was a Blackfoot, and was a young man, whose head displayed the feathers of a chief. For an Indian, he was decidedly handsome; yet the liberal application of paint and grease to his body made him a disgusting sight to the girl prisoner. His black eyes opened in wide admiration, as he looked upon her. “Lightfoot is a long way from the village?” said the chief, speaking to the younger Indian, who was none other than the warrior whom the two scouts had observed. “He was with the party that followed the old trapper,” said Lightfoot. “We lost his trail and could not find it again.” “If the young men wish to find the old whitehead, they can do it by going up the river.” Crazy Snake waved his hand in the direction whence he had come. He led the way under the cover of the trees, and then turned to the young Indian, who had followed silently behind the prisoner. At the first word it was plain that Crazy Snake had taken a new line of thought. “Can the great chief trust his son?” he said, speaking in the hyperbole characteristic of the red men, for Lightfoot was not related to him. Lightfoot folded his arms upon his paint-smeared bosom and looked Crazy Snake full in the eye.