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Page 55
"I know him," he said, "and he is too vile a being to be worthy to meet
death at your hands. Besides, if he be now released, a lifetime of
blindness will prove even a greater punishment than any you can
inflict. Lead him far out upon the trail, and there leave him. Others
must have accompanied him, and they will doubtless find and care for
their own."
So it was done as R�n� had ordered, and on the following day no trace
of the wounded man could be found; but the imprint of other moccasined
feet, near where he had been left, showed that his friends had
discovered and borne him away.
When R�n� was afterwards questioned as to who he was, he answered,
"Chitta, the Seminole."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FRENCH HAVE COME AGAIN
Three years had passed from the time the Spaniards established their
power in this part of the New World, by their fearful massacres of the
French at Fort Caroline and among the sand dunes of the coast, below
San Augustin. They were years of cruelty and injustice on the part of
the Spaniards, and of great suffering to those nations who fell into
their hands; but to the dwellers in the distant land of the Alachuas,
among whom R�n� de Veaux had taken up his abode, they were years of
peace, prosperity, and contentment. The little encampment, that the
good chief Micco had established beside the great spring, had grown
into a populous village, surrounded, in all directions, by broad fields
of waving maize and yellow pumpkins, besides an abundance of other
things pleasant and useful. The forests still teemed with game, and
the rivers with fish, and the skill of the Indian hunter was such that
both could be obtained in plenty at all seasons.
In this beautiful land, with every want anticipated, surrounded by
devoted friends, and leading a life of active usefulness, it would seem
as though no man could be unhappy. There was, however, at least one
among its dwellers who was so, and he was their ruler, the chief of
them all, whose word was their law, and whose slightest command they
hastened to obey. They called him Ta-lah-lo-ko (the White Chief),
though in another land he would be known as R�n� de Veaux.
It was a great longing to visit once more this other land, the fair
France of his birth, and the apparent impossibility of ever doing so,
that made the white chief unhappy, and caused his people to regard him
sorrowfully, as one troubled by an evil spirit. The old medicine men
of the tribe used their most powerful incantations against it, and made
charms with which to drive it away; but they did not succeed, because
they could not understand it, and did not even know its name, which was
"Homesickness."
When the good old chief Micco died, which he did a few months before
the time which this chapter opens, greatly lamented by all his people,
the person who would have naturally succeeded to his office was
Yah-chi-la-ne (the Eagle). When it was offered to him, this brave
young Indian declared that he was not nearly so wise or fit to become a
ruler as his friend Ta-lah-lo-ko, who, though younger in years than he,
was so much older in wisdom that his equal did not exist in all the
land. He therefore begged them to hail Ta-lah-lo-ko as head chief of
the nation. Greatly to R�n�'s astonishment, this was done, and he
found himself anxiously wondering how he should act in this new and
unexpected position.
His modesty, bravery, and ready tact were, however, as quick to aid him
now as when they had guided the boy R�n� de Veaux on his perilous
journey in search of food for the starving garrison of Fort Caroline;
and, day by day, the white chief steadily gained the love and
approbation of his people.
He had entered upon the performance of his new duties with all his
heart and soul, and it was only within a few days that he had felt the
great longing to see once more his own land, and that his thoughts had
been constantly turned towards the old chateau in which his early
boyhood had been passed. He felt so strongly that in some way he was
to receive tidings from his native land, that one day, when a
travel-stained runner from the East was brought to his lodge, he at
once asked "what word dost thou bring of the French?"
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