“Ye’ve taken a pretty ginteel swag, my red panther, and for fear you’ll go to sleep while I’m gone, I’ll dispose of the remainder.” With great gusto he elevated the vessel, and for several seconds it remained poised above his lips. He drank deeply--he drank the jug empty! Then he drew a bunch of sinews from his pocket, drew them around Nanette’s wrists, until the thongs cut into the flesh, and retied her ankles. The last operation accomplished to his inhuman satisfaction, he tossed his captive to a couch in one corner of the apartment. She fell upon her face on the one thickness of bear-skin, and lay motionless. “Now watch her well,” said the renegade, thrusting into the squaw’s hands a silver-mounted cavalry pistol, a relic of St. Clair’s ill-fated campaign. “If she’s gone when we come fur her, why, ’ooman, we’ll cut ye to pieces. I’m a white devil, as you know, and by my sinful soul, if she gits away from you, I’ll tear your lying tongue out.” With this he opened the door, and saw Loosa seat herself beside Nanette, with ready pistol, before he slammed the portal, and bounded toward the council. There was a lull in the nocturnal proceedings when the renegade reached the outer circles of warriors. Turkey-foot, the Shawnee, had just delivered a bitter speech, burdened with able warlike counsel, and the other chiefs were timid in following such a distinguished speaker immediately. It was in deference to Turkey-foot that the silence--an opportune moment for Joe Girty--reigned. “Now’s my time,” he muttered, pushing his way through the circle. “I’ll have every Injun yellin’ within three minutes.” A moment later, he sprung into the glare of the six council-fires. His presence, entirely unexpected at that hour--though none could divine the purport of his absence--was greeted with shouts, and some of the delegates whom he had known, in past and bloody days, sprung forward to welcome his return. But he waved them back imperiously, and sprung to the large mat in the center of the structure, from which the chiefs were wont to deliver their outbursts of Indian eloquence. A murmur ran around the circle, and as the renegade glanced at Simon and the group of British emissaries to his left, he shouted: “Silence!” Instantly every sound was hushed. “I come to gladden the hearts of the assembled chiefs with good news!” he continued. “I am just from the banks of the Nomee,[2] where my hands closed upon the bitterest enemy the red-man possesses.” Every head was shot forward to hear the name of the renegade’s captive. “He’s caught one of Mad Ant’ony’s spies--perhaps Wells?” whispered Simon Girty to McKee. “It’ll be a jolly time for the red devils.” “I saw my captive send a bullet to the heart of Jaguar-tail,” continued Joe Girty, after a moment’s pause. “I saw her stoop to mark his bloody brow--and then--then she became mine.” Simon Girty gripped McKee’s arm, and threw a look of triumph into the agent’s face. “Snakes! he’s caught _her_.” “Who?”