I must plan, and plan quickly, if I would preserve my own life and be of service to others.

And life was worth preserving now, for there was a possibility,--faint, to be sure, yet a possibility,--that Toinette still lived.

How the mere hope thrilled and animated me! how like a trumpet-sound it called to action! She had told me once of friendships between her and these blood-stained warriors; of weeks passed in Indian camps on the great plains, both with her father and alone; of being called the White Queen in the lodges of Sacs, Wyandots, and Pottawattomies.

Perchance some such friendship may have intervened to save her, even in that fierce melee, that carnival of lust and murder.
Some chief, with sufficient power to dare the deed, may have snatched her from out the jaws of death, actuated by motives of mercy,--or, more likely still, have saved her from the stroke of the tomahawk for a far more terrible fate.
This was the thought that brought me again to my feet with burning face and tightly clinched teeth.

If she lived, a helpless prisoner in those black lodges yonder, there was work to be done,--stern, desperate work, that would require all my courage and resourcefulness.