“This will not be a medicine-light, for that can come only from ‘medicine-matches,’” he added; “but I want a fire to see the shape of the ground.  Put in the brand, brothers; let us have a flame.”

The desire of the bee-hunter was gratified, and the whole of the base of the hill around the spot where the filled cask had broken, was illuminated.

“Now, let all the Pottawattamies stand back,” added le Bourdon, earnestly.  “It might cost a warrior his life to come forward too soon—­or, if not his life, it might give a rheumatism that can never be cured, which is worse.  When it is time for my red brothers to advance, they will be called.”

As the bee-hunter accompanied this announcement by suitable gestures, he succeeded in ranging all of the silent, but excited savages on three sides of his fire, leaving that next his mysterious spring to himself, alone.  When all was arranged, le Bourdon moved slowly, but unaccompanied, to the precise spot where the cask had broken.  Here he found the odor of the whiskey so strong, as to convince him that some of the liquor must yet remain.  On examining more closely, he ascertained that several shallow cavities of the flat rock, on which the cask had been dashed, still contained a good deal of the liquor; enough to prove of great assistance to his medicine character.

All this while the bee-hunter kept one portion of his faculties on the alert, in order to effect his escape.  That he might deceive for a time, aided as he was by so many favorable circumstances, he did not doubt; but he dreaded the morning and the results of a night of reflection and rest.  Crowsfeather, in particular, troubled him; and he foresaw that his fate would be terrible, did the savages once get an inkling of the deception he was practising.  As he stood there, bending over the little pools of whiskey, he glanced his eyes toward the gloom which pervaded the northern side of the hill, and calculated the chances of escape by trusting to his speed.  All of the Pottawattamies were on the opposite side, and there was a thicket favorably placed for a cover, so near that the rifle would scarce have time to perform its fatal office, ere he might hope to bury himself within its leaves.  So tempting did the occasion appear, that, for a single instant, le Bourdon forgot his caution, and his mummeries, and had actually advanced a step or two in the direction toward which he contemplated flight, when, on glancing an uneasy look behind him, he perceived Crowsfeather and his two intimate counsellors stealthily preparing their rifles, as if they distrusted his intentions.  This at once induced a change of plan, and brought the bee-hunter back to a sense of his critical position, and of the indispensable necessity of caution to a man in his situation.