A low growl from Mose broke into Joe’s reflections.  The dog had raised his nose from his paws and sniffed suspiciously at the air.  The lad heard a slight rustling outside, and in another moment was overjoyed at seeing Whispering Winds.  She came swiftly, with a lithe, graceful motion, and flying to him like a rush of wind, knelt beside him.  She kissed him and murmured words of endearment.

“Winds, where have you been?” he asked her, in the mixed English and Indian dialect in which they conversed.

She told him the dog had led her to him two evenings before.  He was insensible.  She had bathed and bandaged his wound, and remained with him all that night.  The next day, finding he was ill and delirious, she decided to risk returning to the village.  If any questions arose, she could say he had left her.  Then she would find a way to get back to him, bringing healing herbs for his wound and a soothing drink.  As it turned out Girty had returned to the camp.  He was battered and bruised, and in a white heat of passion.  Going at once to Wingenund, the renegade openly accused Whispering Winds of aiding her paleface lover to escape.  Wingenund called his daughter before him, and questioned her.  She confessed all to her father.

“Why is the daughter of Wingenund a traitor to her race?” demanded the chief.

“Whispering Winds is a Christian.”

Wingenund received this intelligence as a blow.  He dismissed Girty and sent his braves from his lodge, facing his daughter alone.  Gloomy and stern, he paced before her.

“Wingenund’s blood might change, but would never betray.  Wingenund is the Delaware chief,” he said.  “Go.  Darken no more the door of Wingenund’s wigwam.  Let the flower of the Delawares fade in alien pastures.  Go.  Whispering Winds is free!”

Tears shone brightly in the Indian girl’s eyes while she told Joe her story.  She loved her father, and she would see him no more.

“Winds is free,” she whispered.  “When strength returns to her master she can follow him to the white villages.  Winds will live her life for him.”

“Then we have no one to fear?” asked Joe.

“No redman, now that the Shawnee chief is dead.”

“Will Girty follow us?  He is a coward; he will fear to come alone.”

“The white savage is a snake in the grass.”

Two long days followed, during which the lovers lay quietly in hiding.  On the morning of the third day Joe felt that he might risk the start for the Village of Peace.  Whispering Winds led the horse below a stone upon which the invalid stood, thus enabling him to mount.  Then she got on behind him.