Chapter XI: Hondurah’s Last Trail

The day had but an hour to live.

Already gray shadows were stealing among the trees, and from the lake there came the mutterings of a storm.

It was the evening that followed the morn upon which transpired the final scenes of the foregoing chapter.

A tall, middle-aged Indian stood beside a tree, around whose trunk lay the half-devoured carcasses of a dozen dogs. The limbs of some, the head and entrails of others were gone, and all presented a horrible sight to the chief.

If the features of the Indian were not recognizable in the dusk, the head-dress of gray owl-tails at once proclaimed him Hondurah.

He seemed to have taken a leap of twenty years in a single day, for he was looked upon now as the father of a traitress, not as the chief of the great North-western nation. Then he had punished several of the lying chiefs by stripping them of every insignia of rank, heedless of the vengeful scowls they gave him, seemingly not fearing the secret arrow of the future.

“I will go to my unfaithful spawn,” he cried, drowning the taunts of the derisive women. “I will show you that Hondurah can punish his child. I will not return until I can fling at your feet the black scalp of Clearwater.”

Then he plunged into the forest, and his first halt was that executed at the spot where the half-starved Indian dogs attacked Doc Cromer. Hondurah knew nothing of the assault; but he saw that a large number of the dogs had fallen before a knife, and for many minutes he searched the ground around the tree.

During this search he discovered that a party of six Indians had rushed upon the brutes, and, while framing other conclusions, he picked up a white man’s ear!

It was a terrible trophy, and the chief smiled grimly as he turned it over and over in his hand before wrapping it in buck-skin and depositing it in his medicine-bag.

“White man fight wild-dogs here,” he murmured to his satisfaction. “White man lose ear, Injuns take white man, but what do with ’im?”

Unable to answer the question to his satisfaction, the chief moved toward the lake, and presently encountered abundant evidences of the torture-post. A heap of blackened and burned boughs lay at the foot of a young tree, and an investigation revealed a lot of small charred bones.

“Indians burn pale-man here,” said the chief. “They save ’im from dogs and burn ’im here, for they ’fraid he git away if they take ’im to village.”

As he spoke, he knelt down and began to examine the bones, which proved to be those of animals, intent upon solving a certain inquiry to his satisfaction. He had laid his rifle beside the tree, nor did he dream of danger.

Suddenly he was roused by the snapping of a twig, and whirling instantly, he reached for his rifle, but, to his horror, found it missing.

Then, with a cry of defiance, he leaped to his feet, as two dark figures rounded neighboring trees and threw themselves upon him.

The assaulters were young, lithe, active Indians; but their features were concealed by fox-skin masks.

Hondurah’s knife and hatchet were wrested from him, and when he saw that he was completely overpowered, he ceased to struggle, and submitted as quietly as possible.

To his question, “Who binds Hondurah?” a low, sarcastic reply was given, and the chief saw he was in the hands of those who would not scruple to take his life.

They stripped his owl-feathers from his head, tore every insignia of chieftainship from his person, hastily bedaubed him, after the manner of a Green River Indian, with whom the Chippewas were at war, and secured his eyes with a blindfold.

Then through the wood they urged the chief, and, after two hours’ tramp, descended to the stormy lake shore, and filed into a cave whose mouth, so densely packed with young shrubbery, indigenous to the climate, was not visible at a distance of ten feet.

Hondurah could not get a word from his captors, who he felt were the young chiefs whom he had dishonored; but he held his peace, and did not venture to accuse one.

They conducted him a long distance underground, and at last halted in a place which seemed to be quite large.

Presently a torch was introduced, and when the light penetrated the apartment, several savages simultaneously shrunk back, and stared at the figure of a young Indian girl, asleep on the couch.

Hondurah knew that the warriors were excited, and his impatience to learn the cause of that excitement continually increased.

All at once a hand was laid on his arm.

“Hondurah stands over his grave,” said one of the masked Indians, in a disguised tone. “Who would he see before he dies?”

The answer came quickly:

“Clearwater.”

“And what would he do, then?”

“Kill her! She is a traitress!”

A moment later the skinny bandage fell from the chieftain’s eyes, and he beheld one of the masks pointing to the couch.

His eye followed the scarlet finger, and there, peacefully sleeping, unconscious of danger, lay his hunted daughter—Clearwater.

The eyes that peeped from the round holes in the masks were riveted upon the chief, who could scarcely credit his senses, as his expression indicated.

“Will Hondurah keep his word?” asked the spokesman of the conspirators, breaking the almost palpable silence that reigned throughout the cave.

“Yes.”

The word cut the air like a knife.

An instant later the right hand of the chief was free, and he accepted the long-bladed knife, which his liberator extended, without a word.

“We have guided Hondurah to Clearwater,” said the speaking mask. “He swore that she should pay the penalty of treason by his hand. Now let him rid the nation of a traitress—let Hondurah go to the Great Spirit with a word well kept on his hands.”

The masks drew back now, and with the knife firmly griped, and stern determination written on every lineament, the chief stepped toward his child, whose sleep was the deepest that ever fell to the lot of woman.

There was a smile on Clearwater’s face—a smile which told of a dream of peace, and once an expression of compassion swept over the father’s face, as he dropped on one knee beside her couch.

In that second, no doubt, he lived over eighteen years of the past, and a thousand times regretted the oath he had taken. He, himself, stood on the precipice of death; when he had slain his child, the conspirators would coolly take his life, as they had already informed him.

It was a thrilling tableau.

In the father’s moment of indecision he heard a half-suppressed mockery of applause.

He glanced upward.

The contemptuous curling of the red lips was enough for him.

Then he turned again and raised the knife; but bent forward and kissed Clearwater’s lips.

That kiss startled the girl; she moved and opened her eyes.

Hondurah bit his lip, and the blade shot upward for the death-blow.

“Hondurah keeps his word!” he cried. “He will die—”

A rifle-shot terminated the tableau!

Hondurah staggered to his feet, tore the mask from the face of the nearest Indian, and recognized one of the chiefs whom he had reduced.

The Indian pushed Hondurah off; but the red right arm executed a fearful sweep, and the knife cleft the conspirator’s heart!

Both Hondurah and the traitor were dead when they touched the ground, and the remaining masks, five in number, turned to fight the new foes, that sprung upon them like a brace of tigers.

The time taken up by Hondurah’s death-vengeance seemed but a minute, so rapidly did the several events follow each other, and Clearwater, bewildered to distraction, raised herself on her elbow, and watched the battle above her.