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Black Wolf says to the white father: "Give back the Sagamore to the Ricahecrians, to his son, to the village by the falling stream in the Blue Mountains. Then will the Ricahecrians be friends with the palefaces forever." To-morrow Black Wolf and his young men row towards the sunset; let the captive chief be in their midst. This is the gift which Black Wolf asks of his white fathers.
They tortured his spirit. They made him a woman. The great chief of the Ricahecrians no longer throws the tomahawk the guns of the palefaces are about him. He dances the corn dance no more his back is bowed with burdens. His arrow brings not down the fleeing deer, he tracks not the bear to his den he toils like a squaw in the fields of the palefaces.
What tale would you have to tell Colonel Verney? 'The Ricahecrians carried me into the Blue Mountains. There your servant Landless found me and brought me a long distance towards my home. But at the last, to save his own neck, forfeit to the State, he left me, still in the wilderness and in danger, and went his way. My honor, madam, is my own, and I choose not so to stain it.
My young men went out against them, but a cloud came up and Kiwassa hid his face behind it. They came not back, their boats were sunk, the Ricahecrians laughed and went their way, swift as swallows." "Ask him," said the Colonel huskily. "Had they a captive with them a woman, a paleface woman?" demanded Carrington. "With hair like the sunshine and a white robe.
So determined was his attitude, so terribly had they proved his power, so certain it was that before he should be taken one at least of their number would taste that knife, that the Ricahecrians paused, swaying to and fro, yelling, working themselves into a fury that should send them on like maddened brutes, blind and deaf to all things but their lust for blood.
And these roving Ricahecrians, their guests, are of a strange and fierce aspect. It is as well to go in force." "Those vagrants from the Blue Mountains have been here overlong," said the Governor. "I shall send them packing! Well, gentlemen, since we are to have the pleasure of your company, boot and saddle is the word!"
The Ricahecrians went back to the Blue Mountains, and their women raised the death chant for those whom they left stretched out on the bank of the great river.... Seven times had the maize ripened, when Black Wolf led a war party against a tribe that dwelt on the banks of the Pamunkey where a fallen pine might span it. The waters ran red with blood.
The Ricahecrians had paused at the foot of the ascent to hold a council. It was soon over. With another burst of cries they rushed up the steep and upon the rocks, behind which were hidden their victims.
They hadn't come up with the Ricahecrians, hadn't seen hair nor hide of them, had but one report from the Indian villages along the river, and that was that no Ricahecrians had passed that way. So after a while they were forced to believe that they were upon a false scent, and back they comes post haste to the Plantations to get more men, and go up the Rappahannock.
We may count on having an hour's start of them, and we will do all in our power to increase it by breaking our trail as we are doing now. Then we cannot be many leagues from the falls, and the post below them, or we may stumble at any moment upon some Monacan village which will not need our urging to fly out against the Ricahecrians. Please God, we will win through them yet."
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