“_Your_ rifle!” cried Charley, in amazement.
“Ay, mine! It was _my_ wife who was butchered by these savage dogs on that dark night. Oh, what avails the strength o’ that right arm!” said Jacques, bitterly, as he lifted up his clenched fist; “it was powerless to save _her_—the sweet girl who left her home and people to follow me, a rough hunter, through the lonesome wilderness!”
He covered his face again, and groaned in agony of spirit, while his whole frame quivered with emotion.
Jacques remained silent, and his sympathising friends refrained from intruding on a sorrow which they felt they had no power to relieve.
At length he spoke. “Yes,” said he, “I would give much to meet with the man who tried to save her. I saw him do it twice; but the devils about him were too eager to be balked of their prey.”
Charley and the Indian exchanged glances. “That Indian’s name,” said the former, “was _Redfeather!_”
“What!” exclaimed the trapper, jumping to his feet, and grasping Redfeather, who had also risen, by the two shoulders, stared wildly in his face; “was it _you_ that did it?”
Redfeather smiled, and held out his hand, which the other took and wrung with an energy that would have extorted a cry of pain from any one but an Indian. Then, dropping it suddenly and clinching his hands, he exclaimed,—
“I said that I would like to meet the villain who killed her—yes, I said it in passion, when your words had roused all my old feelings again; but I am thankful—I bless God that I did not know this sooner—that you did not tell me of it when I was at the camp, for I verily believe that I would not only have fixed _him_, but half the warriors o’ your tribe too, before they had settled _me!_”
It need scarcely be added that the friendship which already subsisted between Jacques and Redfeather was now doubly cemented; nor will it create surprise when we say that the former, in the fulness of his heart, and from sheer inability to find adequate outlets for the expression of his feelings, offered Redfeather in succession all the articles of value he possessed, even to the much-loved rifle, and was seriously annoyed at their not being accepted. At last he finished off by assuring the Indian that he might look out for him soon at the missionary settlement, where he meant to stay with him evermore in the capacity of hunter, fisherman, and jack-of-all-trades to the whole clan.