After watching his captive awhile, White Lasso stole from the lodge, on tip-toe, and walked away.
Scarcely had he disappeared when the skinny curtain slowly parted, and a face was revealed by the fire which lighted up the small apartment.
“How come pale boy here when Kenoagla still far off?” murmured the secret visitant. “Where White Lasso find him? Ha! he pretty as river lily; his skin fairer than Red Eagle’s.” Then, after a long pause, “Red Eagle not so pretty as pale boy. But Winnesaw go tell Gold Girl that her fair-skinned brother sleeps in White Lasso’s lodge.”
Then the face disappeared, and the curtains met again.
A new love was born in the Pawnee village that night.
Winnesaw, the Pawnee girl, could not conjecture how Charley Shafer had fallen into the hands of the thirty braves. She had witnessed the departure of Tom Kyle and his red marauders, the previous night, and the upper Pawnees had informed her that the young pale-faces were with Frontier Shack, and under his strong protecting care.
The return of the renegade was not looked for until some time the coming day, for the savages knew that the trapper would defend his charges to the last extremity, and that the cabin could not be attacked successfully until nightfall. Bent on solving the mystery that enveloped our hero’s appearance in the Indian village, Winnesaw did not immediately return to Lina Aiken, the Gold Girl, but proceeded to look up some brave who had composed a part of White Lasso’s party.
She saw that individual himself talking in low tones to a young warrior. Both stood in the gloomy shade of a lodge, and all at once Winnesaw grew into a statue not far away.
She felt that she was the subject of the Indian’s conversation, and with every sense on the alert she watched the half-naked twain.
“Wolf Eyes will do it all?” she heard White Lasso say in a half interrogative manner.
A moment later the Indians parted in the shadows, and Winnesaw glided after the younger, who walked toward the lodge occupied by Mr. Denison and his daughter, Mabel.
She saw him approach the guard with a boldness for which she was not prepared, when she knew that a secret hatred existed between the sub-chief and the renegade, and, parting the curtains, Wolf Eyes stood in a listening attitude a long time.