[Illustration: "That is Kahtoo's talk, but this is mine"]
"The tongue of White Arrow is forked. I have heard him say he would fight with the Long Knives against the British and he would fight with them even against his own tribe." One grunt of rage ran the round of three circles and yet Pontiac stopped Crooked Lightning and turned to the lad. Slowly the boy's uplifted hand came down. With a bound he leaped through the head-dress of a chief in the outer ring and sped away through the village. Some started on foot after him, some rushed to their ponies, and some sent arrows and bullets after him. At the edge of the village the boy gave a loud, clear call and then another as he ran. Something black sprang snorting from the edge of the woods with pointed ears and searching eyes. Another call came and like the swirling edge of a hurricane-driven thunder-cloud Firefly swept after his master. The boy ran to meet him, caught one hand in his mane before he stopped, swung himself up, and in a hail of arrows and bullets swept out of sight.
The sound of pursuit soon died away, but Erskine kept Firefly at his best, for he knew that Crooked Lightning would be quick and fast on his trail. He guessed, too, that Crooked Lightning had already told the tribe what he had just told the council, and that he and the prophet had already made all use of the boy's threat to Kahtoo in the Shawnee town. He knew even that it might cost him his life if he went back there, and once or twice he started to turn through the wilderness and go back to the fort. Winter was on, and he had neither saddle nor bridle, but neither fact bothered him. It was the thought of the white woman who was to be burned that kept him going and sent him openly and fearlessly into the town. He knew from the sullen looks that met him, from the fear in the faces of his foster-mother and the white woman who peered blindly from her lodge, and from the triumphant leer of the prophet that his every suspicion was true, but all the more leisurely did he swing from his horse, all the more haughtily stalk to Kahtoo's tent. And the old chief looked very grave when the lad told the story of the council and all that he had said and done.