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Updated: May 23, 2025
"It cannot be for an honest reason. You lay behind the bush. You saw me here and thought me asleep, but you did not approach honestly. You crept through the shadows like a Huron." "Tegakwita's night eyes are not his day eyes. He could not see who the sleeping man was. When he heard the voice, he came quickly."
Then at last the ceremony was done, and the Indian with his bare hands threw the earth over the hole in the mound. Still looking nervously from bush to bush, his hands began to move more slowly; then he paused, and sat by the mound, looking up with a hesitancy that recognized the need of an explanation for the delay. "Tegakwita's arms are weary." "Are they?" said Menard, dryly.
Tegakwita's voice trembled, as if he knew that he was pressing the white man too far. "The grave must be opened. It will not take long." It came to Menard in a flash. The many delays, the anxious glances toward the thicket, these meant that others were coming. Something delayed them; Tegakwita must hold the Big Buffalo till they arrived.
While Menard stood at one side, he went to a bush that encroached a yard on the sacred ground and drew out a number of presents, with necessary articles and provisions to stay the soul on its long journey to the Happy Hunting-Ground. It was at the end of Menard's tongue to repeat Tegakwita's remark about hiding the weapons, but he held back and stood silently waiting. "Come," said the Indian.
Menard's voice was full of contempt. "You need not fear. The Big Buffalo keeps his word." He tossed the hatchet over the grave, and stood unarmed. "Drop your knife." Tegakwita hesitated. Menard took a step forward, and the knife fell to the ground. "Come. We will work side by side." He was surprised at Tegakwita's slinking manner.
He parted the bushes, drew away a heavy covering of boughs, and there, wrapped in Tegakwita's finest blanket, lay the body of the Indian girl. Menard stood over it, looking down with a sense of pity he had never before felt for an Indian. He could not see her face, for it was pressed to the ground, but the clotted scalp showed indistinctly in the shadow.
Tegakwita's nervous manner, his request that the Captain accompany him to the mound, the weapons that never left his side, these might be the signs of a mind driven to madness by his sister's act; but Menard did not recollect, from his own observation of the Iroquois character, that love for a sister was a marked trait among the able-bodied braves. Perhaps it was delay that he sought.
Tegakwita's Onondaga brothers will not gather at the grave of a girl who has given up her nation for a white dog. But he can ask the Big Buffalo, who brought the white dog to our village, to come to the side of the grave." "Your memory is bad, Tegakwita. It was not I who brought the white brave. It was you who brought him, his two hands tied with thongs."
He made a motion of dropping the hatchet, closely watching the Indian; then he straightened, for Tegakwita's right hand held the musket, and his left rested lightly on his belt, not a span from his long knife. "The White Chief knows the danger of leaving weapons to tempt the young braves. He finds it easy to take the chance with Tegakwita's hatchet." "Very well," said Menard, sternly.
Menard slowly rose and looked into the Indian's eyes. "I have no weapons, Tegakwita. The chiefs who have set me free have not yet returned the musket which was taken from me. It is dangerous to go at night through the forest without a weapon. Give me your hatchet and I will go with you." Tegakwita's lip curled almost imperceptibly. "The White Chief is afraid of the night?"
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