"'T is as far as you will dare venture," she whispered, her lips at my ear. "I know not the exact limit of our progress, but the lodge of Little Sauk lies beyond the fire, and I must make the rest of the distance alone."
"But dare you?" I questioned uneasily. "Will they permit even you to pass unharmed?"
"I have many friends among them, blood-stained as they are, and little as I have accomplished for the salvation of their souls. I have been with them much, and my father long held their confidence ere he died. I have even been adopted into the tribe of the Pottawattomies. None are my enemies among that nation save the medicine-men, and they will scarce venture to molest me even in this hour of their power and crime. Too well they know me to be under protection of their chiefs; nor are they insensible to the sanctity of my faith. Ay, and even their superstition has proved my safeguard."
The expression of curiosity in my eyes appealed to her, and as if in answer she rested one hand upon her uncovered head, the hair of which shone like dull red gold in the firelight.
"You mean that?" I asked, dimly recalling something I had once heard.
She shook the heavy coiled mass loose from its bondage, until it rippled in gleaming waves of color over her shoulders, and smiled back at me, yet not without traces of deep sadness in her eyes.
"'T is an Indian thought," she explained softly, "that such hair as mine is a special gift of the Great Spirit, and renders its wearer sacred. What was often spoken most lightly about in other days has in this dread wilderness proved my strongest defence. God uses strange means, Monsieur, to accomplish His purpose with the heathen."
She paused, listening intently to a sudden noise behind us.
"Creep in here, Monsieur," she whispered, quickly lifting an edge of the skin-covering of the lodge. "A party is returning from the Fort, perchance with more prisoners. Lie quiet there until I return; it will not be long."
I crawled through the slight opening into that black interior, turning to hold open the flap sufficiently to peer forth once more. I knew not where she vanished, as she faded away like a shadow; but I had hardly secured refuge, when a dozen painted warriors trooped by, shouting their fierce greeting. In the midst of them, half-stripped, and bleeding as if from freshly inflicted wounds, staggered a white man; and as the firelight fell full upon his haggard face, I recognized De Croix.