The Wolf Queen; or, The Giant Hermit of the Scioto — John Shaqi
The Wolf Queen; or, The Giant Hermit of the SciotoHarbaugh, T. C. (Thomas Chalmers)
General
The Wolf Queen; or, The Giant Hermit of the Scioto
Harbaugh, T. C. (Thomas Chalmers)
Adventure stories; Dime novels; Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction
The chief looked at it a moment, and then turned to Alaska with an
inquiring look.
“Ha! ha! ha! Long ago Alaska had a little boy,” said the mad queen.
“Oh, it was long, long ago; how long Alaska don’t know. Oh, what
hurts poor Alaska’s head?” and she covered her temples with her bony,
bloodless hands.
Memory would return to the poor woman, but, unaccompanied by reason,
it seemed of little account.
“Yes, yes,” she cried, throwing herself before Fairfax, and fastening
her dark eyes on the three spots. “Alaska had a little boy once,
and he had three marks on his shoulder, just like these,” and her
finger touched the birth marks. “Oh, it was many, many moons ago,
when Alaska had no wolves. But the Great Spirit has given Alaska her
little boy again, and he shall become a Shawnee--he shall not die. He
shall be King of the Wolves!”
While she spoke, Tecumseh glided from the lodge, and resought his own.
“The white hunter may be Alaska’s boy,” he muttered, “for
Puekeshinwa, Tecumseh’s father, spoke thus many snows ago. Then he
will not die.”
Mayne Fairfax listened a long time to Alaska’s words, before he spoke.
He knew well his parentage--that he was the child of Ronald Fairfax.
His first recollections were of Fairfax manor, and he, of course,
believed himself to be a Fairfax. The moles on his shoulder he
believed to be mere accidental counterparts of those on the person of
a child loved by Alaska before her days of lunacy--and he resolved
not to gainsay the mad queen, for the moles might prove the means of
saving his life, and perhaps instrumental in the rescue of Eudora,
and the prisoners of the strong lodge.
“The white hunter is Alaska’s little boy,” he said, smiling at the
oddity of his own words, “and he will be King of the Wolves. Let
Alaska haste to make him well, and he will tame all the wolves in the
great forests, and become their White King.”
“And will Alaska’s child hate the White Chief?” she asked, with great
eagerness.
“Yes,” answered Mayne, and he continued, inaudibly, “God knows my
heart spoke then.”
His words brought a laugh to Alaska’s lips, and continually calling
him her “little boy,” she applied bruised and emollient herbs to his
wounds, and the young Virginian, assured of his safety, so far as
the mad queen’s protection went, received new strength. With such a
potent protector as she, white nor Indian would not dare seek his
life.
But he was soon to be divested of that consoling thought.
After his wounds were dressed, young Fairfax fell back on the couch,
and was soon enjoying the sweetest sleep he had known for many hours.
Once, between midnight and dawn, Alaska’s face looked down upon
his, upon which a stray moonbeam fell, bathing its paleness in
indescribable beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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