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Magua affected to consider the expedient, which he well knew proceeded from distrust of himself, as a compliment, and made a gesture of acquiescence, well content that his veracity should be supported by so skilful a marksman as the scout.
In a few moments he returned, his suspicions fully confirmed. Magua had clearly led the party into a trap for purposes of his own, and Hawk-eye at once took steps to secure his capture.
The supporters of the maiden raised their ready tomahawks with the impious joy that fiends are thought to take in mischief, but Magua stayed the uplifted arms. The Huron chief, after casting the weapons he had wrested from his companions over the rock, drew his knife, and turned to his captive, with a look in which conflicting passions fiercely contended.
"A Huron never lies!" returned Magua, coldly, leaning his head against the side of the lodge, and drawing his slight robe across his tawny breast. "Let the Delawares count their prisoners; they will find one whose skin is neither red nor pale." A long and musing pause succeeded.
Instead of manifesting any womanish curiosity to feast his eyes with the sight of a captive from a people he was known to have so much reason to hate, Magua continued to smoke, with the meditative air that he usually maintained, when there was no immediate call on his cunning or his eloquence.
In selecting another to perform the office of reclaiming his highly prized rifle, the scout had lost sight of none of his habitual caution. He knew that Magua had not come unattended, and he also knew that Huron spies watched the movements of their new enemies, along the whole boundary of the woods.
Ten minutes, which appeared so many ages to Duncan, might have passed in this manner; and the warriors were fairly enveloped in a cloud of white smoke before any of them spoke. "Welcome!" one at length uttered; "has my friend found the moose?" "The young men stagger under their burdens," returned Magua. "Let 'Reed-that-bends' go on the hunting-path; he will meet them."
Just then, a warrior of powerful frame darkened the door, and stalking silently among the attentive group, he seated himself on one end of the low pile of brush which sustained Duncan. The latter cast an impatient look at his neighbor, and felt his flesh creep with uncontrollable horror when he found himself in actual contact with Magua.
The savage spoke carelessly to his comrades, who were busied, after their awkward manner, in preparing the horses for the reception of the sisters, and moved a little to one side, whither, by a cautious gesture, he induced Heyward to follow. "Now speak," he said; "if the words are such as Magua should hear."
The baffled Magua continued silent several minutes, apparently indifferent, however, to the repulse he had received in this his open effort to gain possession of Cora. "Do my young men leave the Delawares room on the mountains for their hunts?" he at length continued. "The Lenape are rulers of their own hills," returned the other, a little haughtily. "It is well.
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