Chapter III: The Cave

It was near midnight when the two voyagers reached their cave home, whose main entrance was through a beautiful arch more than one hundred feet in hight. It lay but eight miles to the west of Chapel Rock, but the time spent by the twain while watching the strange and ghostly tableaux, which the lightning had revealed, prevented them from reaching the “castle” sooner.

The waves were still unpacified; they dashed into the arch with a fury perfectly irresistible, and the Destroyer laid the paddle aside as the white-crested billows took up the barque in their arms, as it were, and hurled it far into the cave.

“Well, Ahdeek, here we are once more,” said the youth, springing from the canoe, which the receding waves had left stranded on the hard floor of the natural hall. “Now, if nobody has disturbed our furniture and so forth, we are, indeed, all right. I, for one white boy, feel sleepy, and I hope daylight will find me in the arms of the drowsy god.”

“Ahdeek not sleepy at all,” was the reply, as the speaker stepped from the boat. “He want to find ring, so that when pale girl come to him an’ say, ‘Where ring?’ Ahdeek say, ‘Here, pale girl,’ an’ he give it up.”

“Boy, where do you think you lost the ring?” questioned the White Tiger.

The half-breed, forgetting that they stood in Cimmerian darkness, answered with a shake of his head, which, of course, his companion could not see.

“Maybe you lost it in the woods, when the Chippewas chased you?” he suggested.

“Ahdeek go back on trail to-morrow. He hunt for ring; if he no hunt, the bones of the old pale-face will rise from his grave and haunt half-breed.”

“Well, we’ll cease to talk about that ring,” said the Destroyer, who had lifted the canoe from the beach, and deposited it on pegs against the black wall. “I’m so glad that you’ve returned safely, and, after supper I’ll fix your shoulder up; then we’ll divide the powder.”

They moved off in the gloom.

“So,” said Ahdeek, musingly, “Chippewas kill all traders. Did they hunt for White Tiger?”

“I should reckon the red fiends did hunt for me,” replied the youth. “Day and night, since the massacre, I have had legions of dusky foes on my trail, but I have succeeded in eluding them, and when they least expected the White Tiger, he would leap upon them, and bury his teeth in their flesh.”

The half-breed uttered a low ejaculation of supreme satisfaction.

Now all conversation ceased, and presently Ahdeek found himself standing alone against a ragged wall. His companion had suddenly, noiselessly deserted him, and presently the whine of a panther’s cub saluted his ears.

“Nobody in castle,” muttered Ahdeek, starting forward, and when he had advanced several steps the flash of flints greeted his vision.

“The coast is clear, boy,” said the Destroyer, looking up from the fire he was kindling. “We’ll enjoy a rest now, and then we’ll see if we can’t find the ring, the ghost, and at the same time, pay the Indians for killing our trader friends.”

The half-breed threw himself before the blaze, and tenderly removed his hunting-coat.

“White Tiger look at shoulder now,” he said; “it beginning to hurt.”

But the boy did not reply. He was gazing at the opposite wall of the cavern, and slowly, and apparently without noticing Ahdeek, he drew a torch from the fire and rose to his feet.

Ahdeek regarded him, silenced by wonder, and afraid to move.

Once or twice the youth flourished the flambeau about his head, to brighten the blaze, and then approached the wall with rapid strides.

“Am I the victim of a delusion?” he queried in a low tone. “Surely I saw marks on the wall—marks which were not there when I left this place four days since.”

Within several feet of the rock he paused, and looked straight ahead, but saw nothing save gray stone, highly polished by the hand of nature.

For a moment he was inclined to laugh at this deception, when suddenly Ahdeek leaped from the fire and with a cry of “The ring!—the ring!” bounded toward him.

Was Ahdeek a victim of the delusion as well as himself?

“There’s no ring here, boy,” began the Destroyer, with a bright smile. “Our eyes—”

But his sentence was broken abruptly, for the half-breed jerked him, with much rudeness, to one side, and pointed to the wall obliquely to their right.

The youth uttered a cry of profound wonderment, for on the glittering surface of the wall, he saw a large ring which, notwithstanding the rude tracery, resembled the bauble that Ahdeek had lately lost!

For a minute the twain looked from the picture into each others’ faces.

What did the ring mean? Who had traced it on the wall?

The Destroyer stepped nearer, and letters suddenly grew into being on the smooth stone. The changing of the torch revealed them.

“What words say?” cried Ahdeek, clutching his comrade’s arm, as he pointed excitedly to the letters which he could not master.

The young death-dealer did not reply, but continued to shift his position until every letter was plainly revealed.

Then he read:

“White Tiger, you have my father’s ring! Meet me here one week from
this night, and place it on my finger, else I rid the Chippewas of
their Destroyer.

“_August 12, 1763._
“_Signed_, Marie Knight.”

The Destroyer read the inscription twice before he moved a muscle.

“Come, brother, what words say?” questioned Ahdeek, impatiently.

“They tell you to place the ring on the pale girl’s hand one week from last night, or die.”

The half-breed smiled ludicrously.

“Ring lost.”

“It must be found!”

“But where pale girl?”

The death-dealer shook his head, and the scene on Chapel Rock again swam before his eyes.

“How girl know Ahdeek had ring?” questioned the boy, a moment later.

“No doubt she caught a glimpse of it in the wood, as you rushed past her some time. She has tracked you to the cave, and discovered that here you live. She believes you the real White Tiger, and, entering here last night, and finding you absent, she has left her commands on the wall.”

Ahdeek nodded, and murmured, “Good, good!”

At length he looked up.

“Come, White Tiger, tie up Ahdeek’s wounds,” he said. “He want to go hunt pale girl’s ring. He go ’fore day.”

“No, no, you must stay here until _I_ leave,” said the Destroyer, with determination. “Consider, boy; she will not return for one week. In two days we can retrace your tracks. You lost the ring in the wood to-night—not in the lake, as I first thought, for your hands were not in the water. But really, boy, I think that the pale girl will never come for the ring.”

The half-breed looked up inquiringly.

“I believe that we saw her in Chapel Rock to-night.”

Ahdeek shook his head.

“May be pale girl,” he said.

“Then she must be dead. So, Ahdeek, don’t trouble yourself—”

“Pale girl not dead!” interrupted the half-breed, bringing his hand down upon his brother’s shoulder with emphasis. “_He_ said that she would come for ring, and while he spoke, Kitchi-Manitou took him to his lodge.”

“Who was _he_, Ahdeek?”

“Can’t tell now, White Tiger,” was the reply. “She not dead; she must have ring within six sleeps, or Ahdeek steps upon the long trail.”

“No!” cried the young avenger. “Ahdeek, we are brothers, and I will kill the person who sheds one drop of your blood—I’ll break the arm that is uplifted to strike you.”

“White Tiger better not strike pale girl,” said the half-breed, looking the Destroyer squarely in the eye. “She—”

Here he caught his tongue, and for the fourth time called attention to his shoulder.

Before turning to the fire, the youth re-read the writing on the wall, and, as he stepped therefrom, the lines gradually faded, until they were entirely lost to his vision.

Ahdeek remained sullen during the dressing of his wound, which was not so bad as it might have been, the heavy hunting-frock having protected his flesh.

“I do not think the Indians killed Doc Cromer,” said the Destroyer, looking up from the meal they were discussing before the blaze. “I couldn’t find his body after the massacre, and I wonder that he has not been here. You know, boy, that he was the only trader who knew our cave.”

“Oh, he dead, like all the traders!” said the half-breed. “Indians make sure work of traders. Pontiac got long arms and strong voice.”

The final word still quivered Ahdeek’s lips, when the boy Destroyer dropped his pemmican at the edge of the fire, and leaped to his feet.

A second later the half-breed followed his example, and side by side the twain stood facing the entrance with ready rifles.

A score of rifle-shots, scarcely distinguishable from a single report, had risen above the noise of the storm, just beyond the mouth of the castle.

“The Chips are everywhere!” exclaimed the youth, in a low tone. “Who can they be chasing to-night?”

The question was answered by the sound of footsteps, and the next moment a figure bounded from the corridor into the firelight. Upon a sight of it, the faces of the tenants of the cave touched their rifle-stocks; but the Destroyer quickly dropped his weapon and covered Ahdeek’s flint with his hand.

“Spare him, Ahdeek!” he cried. “’Tis Cromer, thank God!”

The new-comer looked up at the mention of his name, uttered a light cry of joy, staggered forward, and then sunk heavily to the ground.

“Shot by the red fiends!” cried the Destroyer, springing toward the prostrate man, who lay on the rocks bleeding, gasping, and trying to rise.

“Leave me!” he ejaculated, noticing the Destroyer’s action. “They were watching the cave, curse—the—hounds! Listen! there! they’re coming now. Go! they can’t torture the old trader who outwitted them at his cabin!”

“We won’t leave you, Doc,” said the youth. “We are not ingrates.”

“Rifle, rifle, then!” shrieked the trader. “One more shot before I go!”

With mighty effort he raised himself to his knees, and griped the weapon which Ahdeek, with a cry of admiration, thrust forward.

There was no retreating. The trader was too weak to run; the avengers too brave, too manly to desert him to the tomahawk.

The moment that followed the trader’s last words saw the mouth of the corridor swarming with Indians.

They were met by a trio of rifles, not a shot of which was thrown away.

The Chippewas did not pause; their dead comrades were hurled aside before they could touch the ground, and, though the heroic three used their pistols to advantage, they rushed on to certain victory—which so often rewards overwhelming numbers.

Doc Cromer, the trader, sunk exhausted before the fierce onset, and the clubbed rifles of the White Tiger and his darker brother, who disputed the ground with heroic valor, could not turn the fortune of battle.

For a moment a confused mass of humanity swayed to and fro in the center of the cavern, then it became entangled, and a terrific shout soared to the circled roof.

It was a shout telling that the bitterest enemies the Indians ever possessed, had fallen alive into their hands.