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"Try your skill with me," he cried, striking his breast, and though he spoke a broken mixture of Huron and Ottawa, his air was so rhetorical that the Ottawas, always keen for a dramatic moment, stopped to listen. I balanced the spear in my hand. "I am trying my skill with the Ottawas," I said. "Since when has Pemaou, the Huron, forsaken his own camp?" The Huron drew back.
We reached the mouth of the Wild Rice River at evening, and pushed up through the reeds in the darkness. I knew if Pemaou was lying in ambush for me this would be the place for him. But we reached the village safely, so I said to myself that the Huron had grown slow-witted.
I was a fool to have pretended, even to myself, that I thought the savages listened. A fool can do harm enough, but a cowardly, soft-hearted man is the most dangerous of knaves. I might have killed Pemaou when I threw the spear at him; I might have killed him the night before my wedding in the Pottawatamie camp. I had withheld my hand because it was disagreeable to me to kill.
I was not clear as to my course. "Why do you think that we have Singing Arrow?" I blurted out finally. "Pemaou told me." Pemaou again! But we had tricked him. I grinned with joy to think of him with his nose still rooted close to the deserted hole. I could almost forgive him for the trouble he was causing now. "Pemaou lied," I said cheerfully. "Singing Arrow is not with us, Father Carheil.
But among savages news runs underground as well as over, and I had scarcely covered half the space that I had set for myself before the crowd began to disappear. It slipped away like water between the fingers, and in a moment there remained only the guards, Pemaou, and a few Ottawas.
Cadillac pushed me out of earshot of the men. "Montlivet, you cannot understand. Listen to me." I tried to shake him away. "There is nothing more that you can say. Monsieur, unhand me. My wife left with Starling. She is undoubtedly in the Seneca camp. Pemaou and Starling are in league, and they go to the Senecas because they hope to make terms on behalf of the English with the western tribes.
"On guard!" he cried in my own tongue, and I remembered that he had spent some time among the French at Montreal. I caught the spear, and cursed myself for a fool. The Indians again gave tongue to their approval, and gathered in a ring, leaving the space between Pemaou and myself clear. All was ready for the game to proceed.
I suddenly realized that I was enjoying myself more than in a long time. But the test was to come. When Pemaou had heard all he wished, he would aim the spear at my throat, and so, though I threw negligently, I watched like a starved cat. I heard the council agree upon a decisive measure, and I knew that the Huron's moment had arrived. He seized it.
I had been trying for a good many hours to balance the right and wrong of this matter in my mind, and my reason had insisted to my inclination that, if I had opportunity, I must kill Pemaou without warning. We respect no code in dealing with a rattlesnake, and I must use this Huron like the vermin that he was. So I had taught myself. But now I could not do it.
They may break camp at once and push on. We may miss them." I smoked, and shook my head. "If they do, we cannot help it. But I think there is no danger. They will want to halt some time at La Baye, and try for terms with those tribes. My work there has been secret, even Pemaou does not seem to know of it, and they do not suspect a coalition. So they feel safe. I think that we shall find them."
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