The little monosyllable pealed from three hundred throats as from the throat of one man.
Then the eyes that covered broad, bare breasts, dropped nearer the rifle-barrels and bow-strings; but a voice, and the springing of a girlish form from the body of Red Eagle, stayed the hand of massacre.
“Stay your hands, Plattes and Loups!” she cried, pausing between the divided tribes. “The pale boy did not slay Red Eagle. The ball that reached his brain came from Kenoagla’s rifle!”
Every rifle was lowered, and every eye fell upon Tom Kyle.
His face became as pale as death, and, trembling visibly, he rose in his stirrups.
“The red snake who basely shot White Lasso hates the Pawnee King. She would save the pale boys, and see him die. The warriors will not listen to her false tongue when they can read her heart.”
The red-girl’s voice quickly followed the renegade’s:
“The Pale Pawnee’s rifle shoots a big bullet,” she said, calmly, firmly. “It will not enter the muzzle of the white boy’s gun. Take Kenoagla’s lead and try it. It will not fit the white boy’s gun; but it will fit the hole between Red Eagle’s eyes. And then, Kenoagla hated Red Eagle because he got the Gold Girl.”
Three Pawnees sprung from their steeds and griped the rifle which George Long had retained with a deathly grip while sinking in the quicksand.
“Take it!” he hissed. “That girl can make the Pawnee believe any thing.”
The savages who were prominent actors in the cabal which existed against the renegade, carried on the examination.
Tom Kyle’s bullet would not fit the boy’s gun; but it could be placed in the hole in Red Eagle’s brain. It fitted that death-wound to a nicety.
The renegade handed his rifle to a chief.
“If I slew Red Eagle I would fight; but, knowing that I never aimed at his head, I surrender to my people.”
The next moment he sprung from his horse, and, guarded by a score of warriors, he was hurried away.
“Curse that sharp-eyed girl!” he muttered. “I’ll have her blood for this yet! And the Gold Girl shall be mine in spite of all the red demons of the prairie! Though dethroned, the Pawnee king is not friendless!”
In the jaws of death, villains plot anew.
Tom Kyle was thrown into the only strong wooden structure that the Pawnee village contained, while the young adventurers were placed in a lodge and guarded by equal numbers of Platte and Loup Pawnees.