Chapter V: Temptation

Unmanned, shaken to the very innermost part of his nature, and faint both from the stench of the cavern and lack of food and water, the wretched George Parsons waited the return of the Medicine until hope gave way entirely to despair.

Then a light broke in upon him; he saw the old trickster enter, take the poisonous serpents in his hands as if they had been sticks, toss them back into their dens and close the opening, drive bear and wildcat out of sight and advance toward him with a most sardonic smile.

"The pale-face has been well guarded," he said, as if his keepers had been of the most pleasant kind.

"As I never wish to be again. God only knows what I have suffered. I expected the snakes would crawl upon me and sting me to death--expected that every moment would be my last."

"And so it would have been had I not charmed them. But come."

Never did a man get more quickly out of a hateful place. So great was his anxiety to be beyond the horrors he had endured that it forced a smile from even the grim lips of the Medicine, as he led him to a wigwam, where he was treated as a welcome guest might have been.

Relieved from terror, and with his bodily wants supplied, the first thought of the renegade was for the girl, her lover and the scout. The latter he was told had fled like a coward, but swift-footed warriors had started upon the trail and it was more than probable that his scalp was even then hanging at their belts. The lover was in confinement and would die by torture, and the girl he could see at any time.

That time with him was then!

The sufferings he had undergone, in place of softening his heart and bringing pity, had made him still more revengeful, and when he was led into her presence his face was as black as a thunder-cloud.

"Great Heaven!" she exclaimed, instantly surmising the part he had played in the terrible drama, "you here--miserable traitor?"

"Leave us," he said to the Indians. "I would talk to her alone."

"As the pale-face wills. When he is tired of the squaw the red warriors would talk to him also."

His request having been complied with, he hissed:

"Traitor? Better that you use soft words, my lady. Do you know that both yourself and your lover are in my power?"

"But for the love of mercy do not let any harm come to him," and she flung herself upon her knees and raised her clasped hands to him.

"His life is in your hands."

"And you will help me save it?"

"You can do so."

"How? Tell me how. I will do any thing--give my own for him."

"Let us then be friends."

"I have never felt otherwise toward you."

"Give me your hand."

She laid her little trembling fingers gently within his proffered palm, and as he drew her nearer to him, he continued:

"Now a kiss, Olive."

"No, no," she murmured, drawing back.

"You are keeping them for your lover," he sneered. "Have you forgotten that I told you his life was in your hands?"

"No, but--"

"Will you not give me a kiss?"

"If you are a man you would not ask me, knowing what you do."

"Ay, knowing what I do," he replied, bitterly, and fast losing control of his temper. "This I do know, that you scorned my love and--"

"As God is my judge I was sorry to do so and--"

"As he is my judge you shall be sorry almost unto death that you ever did. But a kiss I will have."

"Oh! heaven, are you a man or--"

"Beast?" he said, finishing the sentence for her, with a mocking laugh, and he exerted his superior strength to draw her to him.

Her quickness baffled him. She tore loose, retreated as far as possible and buried her face in her lap. But it was in vain she did so. He lifted her up again--held her hands so that she was powerless, and forcing her to look in his face, continued:

"You must and shall kiss me."

"Never!"

"It is the first move toward friendship."

"Then we shall never be friends."

"Then you are cold-hearted toward Mayo."

"Cold-hearted? God alone knows how I love him."

"And will not give even a kiss to keep him from suffering?"

"He would scorn me--would have a right to do so if I should consent--did not battle for his honor as well as my own."

"But I love you just as well."

"It can not be. You have plotted my destruction."

"With love turned to hatred and vengeance for the moment, by black despair, I might have sought to destroy. Now I would save all."

"Can you do so?" she asked, doubtfully.

"Yes--yes."

"Save him--him, as well as me?"

He knew that every word was a lie, but went recklessly on, determined to carry his point, cost what it might.

"Yes. I can and will save you both--upon one condition--that you will fly with me."

"Fly with you?" she repeated, slowly, and as if not fully comprehending. "Fly with you?"

"And be my wife."

"Coward, traitor, fiend!" she exclaimed, struggling with almost superhuman strength to get free from him. "Your wife? You, the betrayer of your own race--the murderer of those who trusted you! A thousand times would the grave be more welcome."

"But you shall, willing or unwilling. And thus I seal the compact."

He drew her still more closely to him and leaned down his face to kiss, but, in the fierceness of her utter detestation, she struck him with her little clenched hand upon his mouth until he could not restrain an expression of pain.

Then, all of restraint was thrown aside, and standing forth in his true colors, he was revealed before her with every black passion starting from his face.

"Now, by heaven! you shall be mine, and, as for your lover, he shall die with red-hot flames around him--die amid the most horrid of tortures, and even while his screams for mercy are ringing in your ears, I will clasp you to my heart and take a hundred kisses for every one you refuse me now."

"Horror!"

"That will be no name for what he shall suffer, and all your tears and prayers and sorrow shall be of no avail toward his release, but his horrible groans be sweet music in my ears as well as those of the Indians."

"Oh, God! spare him. Oh! why has Heaven abandoned him to one whose heart is flint?"

"You have rightly named it, but you have made it so. It was as wax in your hands, but you taunted, mocked, and repulsed me. As I loved, even so can I hate."

"It shall not, must not be. I will appeal to the Indians themselves," she replied, wringing her hands in agony. "Even they must be less brutal than you."

"I have bought you of them," he answered with a smile of gratified malice. "You are mine, body and soul. Do you hear? body and soul! My wife you have got to be, and if it will make your future more happy to have your lover first burned at the stake, why, be it so. But remember now, as you will have to do in the hereafter, that his life is in your hands--that you send him to destruction when you might have saved him even from pain."

"Oh, God! save him--pity me--guide me."

"Think well and decide."

The terrible words almost drove her to distraction. She remembered with fearful minuteness how the great flames leaped, roared, danced, circled, and was rapidly giving way, when his hand touched the naked flesh of her shoulder and she instantly nerved herself, and with the stony countenance of despair, answered:

"I have decided!"

"How?"

"That I will never be your wife."

"And let your lover perish in the flames?"

"Even that were better than to stain my soul, and I can meet him in heaven, as pure as now."

"It will be long before you do so! I shall take care that you do not have an opportunity to lay violent hands upon yourself," and happy that the words would pierce her heart like a knife, "you will be a wife without even the ceremony of marriage. Even the miserable apology the Indians sometimes indulge in shall be denied you."

"Your wife I will never be."

"I swear that you shall."

"And I, before heaven and the holy angels, that I will not. I would dash my brains out against a stone first."

"We will see whose oath is kept. Now I go to complete the means for getting rid of your lover. Then I will come and woo you for the last time."

She sunk upon her knees as he released her, and raised her hands on high while her thoughts were breathed forth in the most agonizing prayer. But even as she was doing this--even as he was unfastening the curtains of the wigwam, an Indian warrior dashed up, waving a bloody scalp.

"God! Heaven! Mercy!" burst from the lips of the heart-broken girl. "It is that of--"

She could not finish the sentence, feeling that her lover had been murdered, and fell senseless to the ground.

"It is that of the scout, thank God!" said Parsons, feeling sure that the one he stood most in dread of was forever out of the way.