It was Edmonton Ridgar.
Reluctantly they obeyed, sullenly, as if bound by a bond against their
will.
In the sudden hush he spoke.
"What do ye here, my brothers?" he asked, and waited.
There was no reply from the mass before him.
"Wherefore is the spirit of my Father vexed that it disturbs my watch
inside the death-lodge?"
The small rustling of the excited crowd ceased in every quarter.
They stilled themselves in a peculiar manner.
"Oh, ye sachems and Men of Wisdom," he said, turning to the headmen
gathered together, "come ye to the tepee of Negansahima and behold what
ye have done!"
Slowly, as he had come, the chief trader of De Seviere turned about and
passed out of the light. One by one, in utter silence, their faces
changed in a moment into masks of uneasiness, the sachems and medicine
men rose and followed. In the wavering shadows thrown by the central
fire the big tepee stood in awesome majesty. Ridgar raised the flap and
entered, dropping it as the savages filed in to the number of all it
would hold.
"See!" he said dramatically.
Over the bier of piled skins which held the wrapped and smoke-dried
figure of the dead chief there danced upon the darkness, eerie in pale-
green living fire, the ghost of the crested and sweeping head-dress
that he had worn in life.
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