The Watchers of the Plains: A Tale of the Western PrairiesCullum, Ridgwell
General
The Watchers of the Plains: A Tale of the Western Prairies
Cullum, Ridgwell
Western stories
"We go where white men and Indians live in peace."
"No white man or Indian lives in peace where he goes."
Little Black Fox pointed scornfully at the cowering white man. The squaw
had no answer ready. But the renegade himself found his tongue and
answered.
"We go until the white man's anger is passed," he said. "Then we return to
the great chief's camp."
For a while the young chieftain's eyes seemed to burn into those of the
man before him, so intense was the angry fire of his gaze.
"You go," he said at last, "because you fear to stay. It is not the white
man you fear, but the Indian you have betrayed. Your tongue lies, your
heart lies. You are neither brave nor squaw-man. Your heart is the heart
of a snake that is filled with venom. Your brain is like the mire of the
muskeg which sucks, sucks its victims down to destruction. Your blood is
like the water of a mosquito swamp, poisonous even to the air. I have
eyes; I have ears. I learn all these things, and I say nothing. The hunter
uses a poisoned weapon. It matters not so that he brings down his quarry.
But his weapon is for his quarry, and not for himself. He destroys it
when there is danger that he shall get hurt by it. You are a poisoned
weapon, and you have sought to hurt me. So."
Wanaha suddenly stepped forward. Her great eyes blazed up into her
brother's.
"The great chief wrongs my man. All he has done he was forced to do. His
has been the heart to help you. His has been the hand to help you. His has
been the brain to plan for you. So. The others come. They take him
prisoner. He must fight for them or die."
"Then if he fights he is traitor. So he must die."
Nevil had no word for himself. He was beyond words. Even in his extremity
he remembered what Seth had said to him. And he knew now that Seth's
knowledge of the Indians was greater, far deeper, than his. This was his
"dog's chance," but he had not even the privilege of a run.
The irony of his lot did not strike him. Crimes which he had been guilty
of had nothing to do with his present position. Instead, he stood
arraigned for a treachery which had not been his, toward the one man to
whom he had ever been faithful.
But while his craven heart wilted before his savage judge; while his mind
was racked with tortures of suspense, and his scheming brain had lost its
power of concentration; while his limbs shook at the presentiment of his
doom, his woman stood fearless at his side, ready to serve him to the
bitter end, ready to sacrifice herself if need be that his wretched life
might be saved.
Now she replied to her brother's charge, with her beautiful head erect and
her bosom heaving.
"No man is coward who serves you as he has served you," she cried, her
eyes confronting her brother's with all the fearless pride of her race.
"The coward is the other. The one who turns upon his friend and helper
when misfortune drives."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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