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Updated: May 24, 2025
The dialogue lasted for ten minutes, the speakers at intervals glancing towards us; but we knew the theme, and patiently awaited the issue. It was soon to be declared to us. We saw the chief wave his hand as a signal that the conversation was ended; and the speakers parted. Wa-ka-ra walked back among his warriors, while Marian was seen returning to our council.
Marian had interpreted to us the views of the Utah chief in relation to the Mormons. These wily diplomatists had, from their first settlement in the Utah territory, courted the alliance of Wa-ka-ra and his band. They had made much of the warlike chief had won his confidence and friendship and at that hour the closest intimacy existed between him and the Mormon prophet.
I fancied both the tone and the gesture were repellant; but soon perceived that I was mistaken. "I need none," she repeated, "all has been explained." "Explained! How?" I inquired, taken by surprise at the unexpected declaration. "Wa-ka-ra has told me all." "What! of Su-wa-nee?" A gesture of assent was the answer. "I am glad of this. But Wa-ka-ra! how knew he the circumstance?"
"It has been done by the hands of his enemies by red men. The white circle was designed for a mark, at which many bullets have been fired. The red streaks you see are blood, that has streamed from wounds inflicted on the stranger's body! When Wa-ka-ra shall know who caused that blood to flow, he will hasten to avenge it."
I was face to face with the most noted war-chief of America: whose name, though new to me, was at that moment dreaded from Oregon to Arispe, from the banks of the Rio Bravo to the sierras of Alta California. It was Walker the war-chief of the Utahs the friend of the celebrated trapper, whose name he had adopted; and which, by the modification of Utah orthoepy, had become Wa-ka-ra.
The smoke from their shots shrouded both allies and enemies; but, from the fact of a halt having been made, I presumed the Arapahoes were making stand by the butte. It was not so. After the first round of shots, the firing ceased; and the Utahs again went charging onward. The Arapahoes had given way, and were fleeing down the valley. There they must meet Wa-ka-ra.
I could hear the trapper declaring in broken English the nature of our errand that he had been sent by Wa-ka-ra to act as their guide; and that we his companeros, were the Utah hunters, to provide game for the caravan. Of the Mormons who rode up to us there were half-a-dozen in all; and I was fain to hope that they were not a fair specimen of the emigrant party.
Equally puzzled by her look and behaviour, I faced round in the direction indicated by her glance. I had the explanation at once. The chief, Wa-ka-ra, had arrived at the butte; and sat halted upon his war-steed by the side of the waggon. There were three or four other Indians around him, mounted and afoot; but one on horseback was entirely unlike the rest. This one was a woman.
Wa-ka-ra has bound it up. It still bleeds a little, but it is nothing." It was the role of the surgeon, then, the chief had been playing when seen in that ambiguous attitude! More light for Wingrove! "What a fiend!" I said, my reflection directed towards Su-wa-nee. "She deserved death!"
The warlike preparations going on outside appeared greatly to interest her; and I thought she regarded them with impatience, or as if anxious about the event. Who or what was the object of this solicitude? Wa-ka-ra? In what relationship stood she to the chief? A captive she could scarcely be: else would she not have been permitted to stray so far from the encampment? His wife?
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