The Westerners Part 40

"My daughter has been deceived," said Lone Wolf gravely. "This is not a gathering of the women. She must go."

She did not seem to hear him, but broke out panting as soon as she could get her breath.

"My brothers listen to forked words!" she cried, "and the spirit of lies has blinded them, so that they cannot see the truth. They are deceived by much lying because it is mingled with the truth, like tobacco and willow bark. He says he has been on the long war trail and now returns to his brothers with the ponies of his enemies. The trail has indeed been long, for it is many moons since he took the ponies.

How long has he been rich?" she cried. "Many moons! Are the trails closed that he could not find his brothers before, while they were starving? Does he find them now because he calls to them from afar on the war trail? It is lies!

"And my brothers forget," she went on contemptuously, "the Yellow Hair of the Hills and the little child. What was it this one demanded of my brothers? To defile Pah-sap-pa by the slaying of his enemies. It was for that he made us rich, for that he used his craft to bring us power.

It was _his_ power. And when he, led my brothers up into Pah-sap-pa, the voice of Gitche Manitou spoke to them and they went away leaving this one's enemies unharmed, and so he was angry with my brothers and swore to do them an injury. So he killed Buffalo Voice and defiled the totem in order that Gitche Manitou might turn his hand against us! He speaks forked words. Why has he not brought his gifts long before, if what I say is not true? There has been need."

She turned as suddenly as she had come and left the circle, again empty except for the leaping fire. In her spoke the spirit of relentlessness, a deserted woman. She touched with unerring instinct on the one weak spot in Lafond's defence, and thereby discredited the rest. Her reminder of the soreness of their need, when this renegade brother had held out no hand to help them, hardened their hearts and brushed from their minds like cobwebs the structure of confidence which Lafond had so laboriously spun. Without one dissenting voice they condemned him to death. Then the sitting arose.

The hags of the camp advanced and stripped the half-breed naked, in spite of his frantic struggles. They were as strong as men, and they were glad he struggled because that indicated cowardice. Lafond was badly unnerved; his blood was partly Latin and his consciousness of innocence was keen. When he went into a thing with his eyes open, he was ready to take all the consequences with stoicism, should luck turn against him; but a feeling of guiltlessness was unusual enough to render him desperate when unjustly condemned. So he made a pitiful spectacle of himself.

The old hags jeered him. They told him he had a chicken's heart, and promised themselves the pleasure of tasting it after it was torn from his living body. They spat in his face and pinched his arms to see him wince. When he was stripped quite naked, they staked him out to picket pins with rawhide bands, one to each of his four limbs.

While this was going on, the warriors, having thrown aside their blankets, appeared in the full lithe glory of their naked bodies. To the accompaniment of a strange minor chant, they circled slowly around the fire and their victim, hopping rhythmically first on one foot then on the other, stepping high, stooping low. As they pa.s.sed the prostrate man, they struck their knives deep into the ground near his head, for the purpose of seeing him shrink. After a little, they became sufficiently excited, and so the tortures began.

Toward morning the squaws wrapped in a blanket the mutilated burnt carca.s.s, and laid it on a litter which had been preparing while the torture was in progress. The litter was raised in the air to the height of ten feet, bound securely to upright poles.

Man-who-speaks-Medicine had been a member of the tribe. Whatever his sins, he must have a tribal burial.

Then in the grayness of the dawn the little cavalcade filed away, like m.u.f.fled phantoms, toward the east. In the sky the last stars were flickering out. On the hill top the last embers of the fire died. A bird high in the heavens piped up clearly for a moment, and was still.

The breeze of morning rippled over the faintly distinguished, gra.s.ses, and stirred the drying leaves of the litter that stood like a scaffold against the sombre shadows of the Hills.

THE END.

STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY

GENE STRATTON-PORTER

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.

MICHAEL O'HALLORAN. Ill.u.s.trated by Frances Rogers.

Michael is a quick-witted little Irish newsboy, living in Northern Indiana. He adopts a deserted little girl, a cripple. He also a.s.sumes the responsibility of leading the entire rural community upward and onward.

LADDIE. Ill.u.s.trated by Herman Pfeifer.

This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie and the Princess, an English girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family there hangs a mystery.

THE HARVESTER. Ill.u.s.trated by W. L. Jacobs.

"The Harvester," is a man of the woods and fields, and if the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man it would be notable.

But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic quality.

FRECKLES. Ill.u.s.trated.

Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succ.u.mbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel" are full of real sentiment.

A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. Ill.u.s.trated.

The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, loveable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage.

AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. Ill.u.s.trations in colors.

The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love.

The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all.

THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL. Profusely ill.u.s.trated.

A love ideal of the Cardinal bird and his mate, told with delicacy and humor.

KATHLEEN NORRIS' STORIES

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.

MOTHER. Ill.u.s.trated by F. C. Yohn.

This book has a fairy-story touch, counterbalanced by the st.u.r.dy reality of struggle, sacrifice, and resulting peace and power of a mother's experiences.

SAt.u.r.dAY'S CHILD.

Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes.

Out on the Pacific coast a normal girl, obscure and lovely, makes a quest for happiness. She pa.s.ses through three stages--poverty, wealth and service--and works out a creditable salvation.

THE RICH MRS. BURGOYNE.

Ill.u.s.trated by Lucius H. Hitchc.o.c.k.