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In his left hand was a bundle of scalps, the same he had taken from the tent of Wenonga; the grizzled scalp-lock of the chief, known by the vulture-feathers, beak, and talons, still attached to it, was hanging to his girdle; while the steel battle-axe, so often wielded by Wenonga, was gleaming aloft in his right hand.
The steps approached; they reached the door: Nathan threw himself back, reclining against his pile of furs, and fixed his eye upon the mats at the entrance. They were presently parted; and the old chief Wenonga came halting into the apartment, halting, yet with a step that was designed to indicate all the pride and dignity of a warrior.
In the meantime, and at the very moment when the renegade was urging his extraordinary proposals to the young Virginian, a scene was passing in the hut of Wenonga, in which one of Roland's fellow-prisoners was destined to play an important and remarkable part.
It was evident, that the village was by no means so destitute of defence as he had imagined, that the warriors of Wenonga had not generally obeyed the call that carried the army of the tribes to Kentucky, but had remained in inglorious ease and sloth in their own cabins.
The squaws and the children curse me, as I go by: they say I am the killer of their husbands and fathers; they tell me it was the deed of Wenonga, that brought the white man's devil to kill them; 'if Wenonga is a chief, let him kill the killer of his people! I am Wenonga; I am a man; I fear nothing: I have sought the Jibbenainosay.
"I am Wenonga!" he cried, in his own tongue, being perhaps too much enraged to think of any other, "I am Wenonga, a great Shawnee chief. I have fought the Longknives, and drunk their blood: when they hear my voice they are afraid; they run howling away, like dogs when the squaws beat them from the fire who ever stood before Wenonga? I have fought my enemies, and killed them.
The night was even darker than before, the fire of the Wyandotts on the square had burned so low as no longer to send even a ray to the hut of Wenonga, and the wind, though subsiding, still kept up a sufficient din to drown the ordinary sound of footsteps.
"He that would follow upon the heels of Wenonga," said Nathan, "must walk wide of his footsteps, for fear lest he should suddenly tread on the old reptile's tail. Thee don't know the craft of an old Injun that expects to be followed, as, truly, it is like the Black-Vulture may expect it now.
His hirelings were vagabonds of all the neighbouring tribes, Shawnees, Wyandots, Delawares, and Piankeshaws, as I noted well when I crept among them; and old Wenonga is the greatest vagabond of all, having long since been degraded by his tribe for bad luck, drunkenness, and other follies, natural to an Injun.
"Thee is but a boy in the woods, if thee never heard of Wenonga, the Shawnee," replied Nathan hastily, "a man that has left the mark of his axe on many a ruined cabin along the frontier, from the Bloody Run of Bedford to the Kenhawa and the Holston.
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