“The business was not mine, brother, and I may not talk.”
“Oh, well, have your secrets then. And I’ll have mine.”
Monapikot smiled faintly. “And if I guess them?”
“I give you leave, O Brother of the Owl,” jeered David.
The Indian half closed his eyes and peered at the tops of the tall pines that crowned the hill. “Came one by night through the forest,” he said slowly in his native tongue. “The skin of a panther hung about him and he was armed only with a knife. As the weasel creeps through the grass, so this one crept to the lodge of the white man where all were asleep. On the stone without the door he laid a message from his sachem. As the fox slinks homeward when the sun arises, so this one slunk away. The forest took him and he vanished.”
“How know you that?” asked David, affecting great surprise. “It but happened half a moon ago and none has heard of it save all the world! Can it be that you know also what the message was like?”
“An arrow wrapped with the cast skin of a rattlesnake, brother.”
