ãëàâà 20-29

CHAPTER XX.
AN AMAZING DISAPPEARANCE.

Lena Forest came out of the cabin when she heard Pawnee Bill talking with the scouts and the trapper. She recognized the scout, for once he had called on her father, and she ran toward him.
“Oh, if you had but been here sooner!” she wailed.
Buffalo Bill dismounted, and Nomad did the same.
“Yes, we came too late,” said the scout sadly. “I have been talking with Major Lillie, and we think you should be sent at once to the town. Major Lillie will go with you, while my old friend, Nomad, and I will pick up the trail of the Blackfeet murderers of your father. That’s all that can be done now, except to give your father decent burial, which we will do at once.”
He took the girl by the hand, and his kind words caused her tears to flow afresh.
“Now, if you will go back into the house and lie down again for a while it will be better for you,” he urged. “There is absolutely nothing you can do, and you need as much rest as you can get before you start on your trip. We will find your horse; and, if you like, Nomad will go in and prepare something for you to eat, or make some coffee for you.”
“I couldn’t eat a mouthful,” she said.
“But you will go into the house?” he urged.
She understood, turned about with slow feet, and disappeared within.
[130]
Pawnee Bill found the miner’s spade and pick, and brought them out for the purpose of digging a grave, which work he and the scout at once began, while old Nomad set forth on Nebuchadnezzar for the purpose of finding and capturing the girl’s runaway horse.
Buffalo Bill and his friend worked rapidly, and soon had a grave hollowed out. Buffalo Bill then went to the house to get blankets in which to wrap the body for burial.
When he entered the cabin, he was astonished not to find the girl there. However, he thought she had but stepped out, and he went to the door to look around. When he failed to see her, he called to her.
To his repeated calls there was no answer.
He stepped out of the house, and walked around it.
Nowhere was the girl to be seen.
There was a rear door, which was unlocked, but was not open, and a rear window, but the window had not been disturbed.
Cody began to search the ground quickly with his keen eyes. He saw a moccasin track by the rear door, yet he was not sure but it had been made at the time the master of the house had been killed. The house had been entered then, and some things had been taken, so the girl had declared. That more had not been taken was a marvel to the experienced scout.
“Gordon, come here!” he called from the corner of the house.
Pawnee Bill dropped the spade he was wielding and came running.
“The girl is gone,” said the scout. “I found her[131] absent from the house, and I fail to see her anywhere.” He looked at Pawnee Bill earnestly. “Was her mind so affected, do you think, that she would slip out of this back door and into the hills, there?” he asked. “If not——”
“What?” said Pawnee Bill.
Buffalo Bill pointed to the moccasin track.
“That is suggestive, if it is new; but it’s hard to tell when it was made. The girl is gone. You heard me call to her, and she has not appeared, nor answered. If she did not go herself, some one took her. That’s why I asked you that question.”
“Her mind was all right,” said Pawnee Bill anxiously. “She was depressed and almost hysterical, but not enough so to make her run away in that fashion, or do anything rash.”
“Then we must investigate this moccasin track at once. You’ll see that an Indian could have slipped up to the house from the hills, and where we were working we could not have seen him. He could have entered by this rear door, and he could have carried off the girl. The question is, did anything like that occur?”
Pawnee Bill was one of the best of the border trailers. He and the scout bent together to examine that moccasin track, after they had scanned the hills for signs there of Indians.
Soon they found another track, and then another, and still another, all leading from the rear door in the direction of the hills.
“They’re fresh,” said Buffalo Bill, pointing to a bent[132] grass blade, which had been crushed so recently that sap was oozing from it.
“And look there!” said Pawnee Bill, picking up a broken feather.
Where the feather was found they discovered indications that a struggle had taken place, for the grass was cut and torn, and the footmarks did not go straight on; there had been an interruption of the progress of the Indian.
“It’s clear as day now,” said the scout, rising and looking about. “Some redskin stole to the cabin while we were busy at the grave. He had seen her enter, and discovered that he could reach the cabin without being observed by us. The girl had lain down on her bed, and was perhaps half asleep, or may have had her head covered up. She did not see him, at any rate, until it was impossible for her to cry out; though his sudden appearance may have so frightened her that she could not utter a sound. Then he picked her up in his arms, perhaps choking her to make her keep still, and he carried her away into the hills.”
His nostrils were dilating and his bright eyes had become feverish, so strongly did this mental picture of the dastardly outrage appeal to his sensibilities.
“You’re right,” said Lillie. “That is an eagle feather, broken, no doubt, when at this point the girl made a fierce struggle to free herself. She tore out the eagle feather; but she could not escape, for he was too strong; and then, no doubt unconscious after that, she was borne rapidly away.”
“That fellow can’t be more than half a mile from[133] here even now,” said the scout. “We’ll have to follow at once. I wish that Nomad——”
Even before he had finished expressing the wish that Nomad was there, they heard his shout, and saw him riding swiftly in on his old horse.
“Injuns!” he said, before drawing rein. “They’ve captered the gal’s hoss and lit out with it.”
“Did you see them?” Buffalo Bill asked.
“No; didn’t need to; but I seen what they done, and I seen their tracks, and the tracks of the hoss. I follered on a ways, to make shore I wasn’t mistaken, and then I rid ter tell ye.”
“The tracks were fresh?”
“Yes; made this mornin’. Buffler, thar’s Injuns snoopin’ round hyar, and thet’s a fact.”
“More than the horse is gone,” said the scout; “the girl herself is gone!”
Nomad stared at the scout, then gripped his rifle and stared round.
“Tooken by Injuns?”
“Yes; that’s what Gordon and I make of it. Here are moccasin tracks. We think the redskin stole into the cabin while we were digging the grave, and came on her perhaps while she was asleep. Anyway, the thing was done so quietly we didn’t hear a sound.”
He pointed to the tracks, and to the eagle feather.
Old Nomad was for the moment almost too amazed to speak.
“We’ve got ter foller her, Buffler!”
“Yes, and at once; and I was going to say to you that if you will finish filling in the grave of John Forest,[134] we will follow this trail at once. Then you can come on as fast as possible, and no doubt you’ll soon overtake us.”
Nomad looked earnestly at the brown hills.
“Crazy Snake?” he said, voicing the name in the thought of each.
“That’s our opinion; at any rate, the rascal was a Blackfoot, as the feather and the tracks show. I hardly think he had any warriors with him, or, at most, he must have had only a few, or he would have tried to tackle us and get our scalps.”
Nomad turned his horse about and rode to the grave, where he slid out of his saddle.
They saw him at work vigorously with the spade, as they took up the trail, after getting their horses.
The trail was not difficult to follow, until it entered the rocky hills.
They progressed slowly, however, for they could not be sure that an ambush had not been laid for them.
Hard as the trail was to follow in the hills, they clung to it, finding it the tracks of but one Indian.
After a little while it bent back in a semicircle toward the river, this showing that the redskin had merely run into the hills to get the benefit of their cover, and that his real destination was the river.
They followed on more rapidly, and some distance below, where hills and trees would screen him from sight of any one at the cabin, they found that his trail converged more, and then went straight toward the ca;on stream.
Here the trail was so plain in the soft soil that they[135] were able to follow it at rapid speed, and soon came to the river, where they found water on the rocks, and other evidence to show that at this point the Blackfoot had taken to a boat. It was certain he had gone down the river, and not up; for to go up the river would have forced him to pass so near to the cabin that he would have been in danger of discovery, and, besides, the work of pulling against the current would have been no small labor.
“We’ll have to abandon the horses,” said the scout, when they had ridden rapidly on for a half mile or more down the river, finding the way growing rougher, and the ca;on walls contracting until the stream became a walled torrent.
“Or go round, which may be a long journey!” said Pawnee Bill.
“And would be likely to let the rascally redskin slip through our fingers. We’ll have to keep to the river, even if we are forced to swim.”
As they talked, they heard Nomad approaching rapidly. He had finished his work of burying and protecting the body of John Forest, and then had followed hard on the trail of his friends.
It took but a few words to convey to him all that the scouts knew.
“We want you to ride to the town for help,” said Buffalo Bill to him. “Raise a strong force, and come on as fast with it as you can. We’ll stick to this trail. But we’re likely to get into trouble, and we’ll need fighting men, in my opinion, before we accomplish much. The rascal had beaten us temporarily, by taking[136] to the water here; and unless we can get a boat we’re going to have hard work to overtake him.”
“I’m bettin’ it’s Crazy Snake!”
“So we think, though we don’t know it. Spread the news of the rising of the Blackfeet, and hurry with a force to help us, or avenge us.”
The last were ominous words from Buffalo Bill, and proved that he appreciated the dangerous character of the undertaking upon which he now thought of entering.
Nomad wheeled old Nebuchadnezzar in the trail.
“Right ye aire, Buffler,” he said. “I’ll raise ther country, and I’ll be follerin’ ye with a company of men ’fore another twenty-four hours rolls over my head.” He stretched forth his hand. “Shake, Buffler; and you, too, Pawnee! You’re startin’ on a dangerous trip, and I knows it. Mebbe we mayn’t meet ag’in ever in this world. But whatever happens, I know you’ll be found doin’ yer duty.”
He struck his horse with the spurs, waking old Nebuchadnezzar into renewed life.
“Good-by!” he said. “Good luck to ye, pards!”
And then he rode away—the wise, simple, and brave old trapper, Nick Nomad.
[137]
CHAPTER XXI.
THE PRISONER.

Lena Forest had hardly entered the cabin and stepped toward the bed, where, in obedience to the words of Buffalo Bill, she expected to lie down a while, when a footstep sounded softly behind her, and a blanket fell over her head.
Startled and alarmed beyond measure, she yet would have cried out, but that the blanket was drawn tightly about her mouth, and on top of the blanket a heavy hand pressed back the words she would have uttered. She struggled frantically, but uselessly; for she was caught up in arms too strong for her to resist, and was carried quietly out of the room.
Lena soon knew she was out of the cabin, for the feet of her captor no longer thudded dully on the wooden floor, but descended, as if down steps, and sank in soft grass now without a sound.
Then she began to struggle again, trying desperately to throw off the enveloping and smothering blanket, and making so gallant a fight for her liberty that she tore a feather from the redskin’s head. That feather told her that he was an Indian, which was a thing she had already guessed and feared.
She tried in vain to scream for help when this awful fear that she was held by an Indian became certain knowledge; but again that heavy hand kept her from making more than a few inarticulate sounds; and she was being borne on, she knew not where.
[138]
She became unconscious soon, a result largely of the choking and smothering blanket, and for a time thereafter she had no knowledge of anything.
When she was put down at last, arousing at the same time, she succeeded in whisking aside the blanket. Then she saw before her a large Indian, almost naked, smeared with paint, who was drawing a canoe from beneath the bank, and getting it ready, apparently, for a journey on the river that flowed before her.
She recognized the river as the ca;on stream that rolled by her home, and she recognized this spot as one she had seen many a time, a mile below the cabin, at a point where the walls of the ca;on began to contract on the grassy valley, in readiness for further narrowing farther down.
The Indian saw that she had recovered consciousness, and he swung around, lifting his hatchet menacingly.
“White girl no make noise!” he warned, speaking fair English.
The desire to cry out was frozen in her heart, which was filled with a strange terror of this painted redskin. She stared at him, as the bird is said to stare at the snake in whose power it has fallen.
The savage adjusted the light canoe in the water, stopping in his work now and then to listen, as if he anticipated pursuit.
“White girl go with Crazy Snake!” he commanded, again producing the fear-impelling hatchet, whose bright blade glanced the sunlight like burnished silver.[139] To her imagination that hatchet edge was red with the blood of her murdered father.
She tried now to spring up, and to run; and she tried to cry out. But Crazy Snake, with a single bound, caught her by the hair, and threw her to the ground. He flashed forth a knife, now, and thrust it before her terrified eyes.
“Injun kill!” he gurgled, in a way to make her blood run cold. “White girl want Blackfoot kill?”
“Yes, kill me!” she said, in sudden desperation. “Nothing better could happen to me now.”
However, he did not put his threat into execution, for he had simply been trying to frighten her. He lifted her in his bare, painted arms, and deposited her in the canoe, she being too helpless from fear and weakness to do anything to prevent this. Then he stepped into the canoe himself, pushed it off from shore, and, seating himself deliberately, he took up the paddle and sent the light boat skimming downstream.
The current began to race faster here, and this, with the strokes of the paddle, hurled the canoe on at dizzying speed. Yet this speed was as nothing compared with that which the canoe made later on, when it was caught in the torrent that rushed in wild cataracts through the pinched-in space of the narrowed ca;on, where the black walls came close together, and towered to a great height overhead.
Crazy Snake was skillful with the paddle. The girl’s eyes were fixed on the water ahead, and though more than once it seemed to her that the frail craft must[140] surely be split on some rock, with a deft turn he guided it past the danger point, and on down the wild and tumbling stream.
Lena Forest tried to think with something of sanity of her condition, and failed utterly. Horror still held her, and she came from under its spell but slowly.
When the rapids had been passed safely, Crazy Snake began to talk.
“Brown Eyes know why the great Blackfoot chief, Crazy Snake, do this?” he said, naming her thus from the color of her eyes.
She stared at him, as if she did not comprehend his meaning, but really because she was still too terrified to answer him.
“Blackfeet kill man that dig for the yellow earth,” he explained. “The yellow earth makes the white man crazy, and he steals the land of the Indians that he may dig it. So we kill him.”
She knew that he meant her father.
“White men hunting for the yellow earth threw a bad spell on the Blackfeet. The evil spirits were made mad, and killed the Blackfeet. They died. The son of Crazy Snake died. For that we kill the white men.”
She was sitting in the bow of the canoe, facing him, and he stared at her with his shining black eyes, that looked so like the eyes of a snake. She did not wonder that he was called, or called himself, Crazy Snake; for those snaky eyes, to her heated imagination, seemed like the eyes of some deadly serpent. They almost fascinated her.
[141]
“But—but why do you—take me?” she gasped at last.
Crazy Snake gave utterance to what seemed almost a chuckle.
“Brown Eyes purty squaw!” he said. “Wide Foot, the squaw of Crazy Snake, is old; he take a young squaw, who is white. The white men will be killed. But the Brown Eyes she will live.”
The statement roused her as nothing had done since the death of her father.
“I would rather die!” she said. “I will kill myself rather than become your—your wife!”
She half rose, and in another second would have leaped into the stream; but he stretched out his long right arm with a quick motion, catching her by her hair, which had come unbound in her struggles with him, and jerked her flat in the bottom of the canoe.
“Ugh!” he grunted. “Brown Eyes fool! Brown Eyes drown herself? No, no! Brown Eyes be the squaw of Crazy Snake.”
She lay there, in the bottom of the canoe, cowering.
He put the paddle into the canoe, and then lifted her to a seat, where she sat weakly, regarding him with looks of terror and loathing.
Then he tried to make her see that he was doing her a great favor; for he declared again that while all the white men were to be killed, she was to be permitted to live, and would become the squaw of a great chief.
She failed to see the beauty of the picture he tried to draw. She preferred death to that.
[142]
A little farther down the stream Crazy Snake ran the canoe ashore, where he tied it, after sinking it.
She had been compelled to get out, and sat on the bank watching him sink and conceal the boat.
“Brown Eyes go on!” he said, coming up to her.
It seemed that her terror could go no further; but apparently it did, when from the bushes just ahead there appeared now another Indian.
Crazy Snake showed surprise, thus evidencing that the appearance of this Indian was unexpected even by him.
The Indian was a Blackfoot, and was a young man, whose head displayed the feathers of a chief. For an Indian, he was decidedly handsome; yet the liberal application of paint and grease to his body made him a disgusting sight to the girl prisoner.
His black eyes opened in wide admiration, as he looked upon her.
“Lightfoot is a long way from the village?” said the chief, speaking to the younger Indian, who was none other than the warrior whom the two scouts had observed.
“He was with the party that followed the old trapper,” said Lightfoot. “We lost his trail and could not find it again.”
“If the young men wish to find the old whitehead, they can do it by going up the river.”
Crazy Snake waved his hand in the direction whence he had come. He led the way under the cover of the trees, and then turned to the young Indian, who had followed silently behind the prisoner.
[143]
At the first word it was plain that Crazy Snake had taken a new line of thought.
“Can the great chief trust his son?” he said, speaking in the hyperbole characteristic of the red men, for Lightfoot was not related to him.
Lightfoot folded his arms upon his paint-smeared bosom and looked Crazy Snake full in the eye.
“The son of the great chief, Crazy Snake, has but to hear and obey,” he said. “Let the chief speak. Lightfoot is but a child, and will learn wisdom of the great chief.”
They spoke in Blackfoot, of which the prisoner did not understand a word.
She felt so weak and trembling that she was almost on the point of sinking to the ground. She lifted her eyes to heaven, as if praying, and uttered a name, the name of one who, she was sure, would follow to the ends of the earth, to rescue or avenge her, if he but knew. And she uttered, also, the name of Buffalo Bill.
Crazy Snake stopped the words that were on his tongue and gazed at her in a questioning way.
“What does the Brown Eyes say?” he asked.
“Nothing!” she gasped. “Nothing!”
She shook with terror.
Crazy Snake turned again to Lightfoot.
“The young chief is wise,” he said. “Crazy Snake is the great war chief of the Blackfeet. His red arrow burns on the breasts of many white men already, and its bloody fire shall strike fear everywhere. The father of Brown Eyes wears it, and his scalp is now[144] in the belt of Running Deer. But the girl is to be kept in the Blackfoot village. Crazy Snake has work to do, for the white men will gather to avenge the death of the men who wear the crimson arrow.”
Lightfoot stood with folded arms, listening.
“White men, one of them Long Hair, are now pursuing Crazy Snake. So Crazy Snake wishes to turn back; and he wishes to gather warriors, many warriors, to oppose the white men. He would strike the cunning white men down when they follow—strike down the thieves that steal the lands of the Blackfeet that they may dig in it for the yellow earth.”
“The son of the great chief hears,” said Lightfoot, when the older chief paused.
“The great chief will trust Lightfoot to take the white prisoner, Brown Eyes, on to the Blackfoot village, where she is to be held until the coming of Crazy Snake. Does my son hear with open ears?”
“Lightfoot hears what the great chief says.”
The young Indian looked at the girl, who still stood trembling before them. A sudden admiration of her beauty shone in his black eyes, but it was not observed either by the chief or the girl.
“Lightfoot hears, and will obey,” he repeated.
Crazy Snake returned to the canoe, and seemed to consider raising it and resuming the voyage down the river. But he changed his mind, apparently, and, turning from the river, he hastened away, and was soon lost to view.
Lightfoot stood looking at the girl who had been placed in his charge.
[145]
“Come!” he said finally. “We go to the village.”
She was listening to the retreating footsteps of the older chief.
“No, I will not go with you!” she declared.
Admiration showed in his eyes. But he was an Indian, and accustomed to having women obey. He caught her by the wrist and jerked her along.
“Come!” he said. “Brown Eyes is very beautiful. It is too bad that she is to enter the lodge of Crazy Snake, who has a wife already.” He was speaking to himself, for his words were Blackfoot, and she did not understand them. “Brown Eyes is too beautiful to be the squaw of Crazy Snake. She should mate with a younger warrior. Is it meet that winter should marry summer? Brown Eyes is young, and she is beautiful.”
He stopped and stood facing her, feasting his eyes on her beauty. There was something in his look that terrified her. She tried to break away from him, but again he caught her by the wrist and pulled her along when she resisted.
“Come!” he said, and this time he spoke in English. “We go fast. Blackfoot town long, long way. Crazy Snake say we go fast.”
[146]
CHAPTER XXII.
WIND FLOWER.

Crazy Snake had told the young chief that pursuit might be expected, and that was why he was so anxious to hurry on. He felt sure that soon the dreaded Long Hair, as Buffalo Bill was called, would be on his trail. Buffalo Bill’s reputation as a long-distance shot, as a trailer, and as an enemy whose cunning and skill were marvelous, was great among the Blackfeet.
Because of his fear of pursuit Lightfoot stopped now and then to listen. Occasionally, where a small hill invited, he ascended it, dragging the girl with him, and scanned the surrounding country.
Crazy Snake had disappeared, and even the river was not now visible, though the black cliff walls of the ca;on could be seen.
Finally the young chief gained the point where he had left his horse hidden.
Lena Forest was almost exhausted by that time, through fear and the exertions she had been forced to put forth. Lightfoot had been merciless in dragging her on, over obstructions, across chasms and rocky tracts, and through bushy districts where thorny shrubs tore her clothing and lacerated her body.
Several times she had dropped down in sheer weakness and desperation; but at such times he had assumed the ferocity of the old chief himself, and, drawing his hatchet, he had threatened her until she had risen and stumbled on again.
[147]
When the little grove was gained where his horse had been left, Lightfoot was given a shock of surprise. The horse was gone.
He looked about in fear and anger, his black eyes searching for footprints of a thief and the hoofmarks of the horse.
A rippling laugh, strange and wild, came to him from a little distance.
Lena Forest looked toward the point whence it emanated, and was astounded to see an Indian girl rise there from behind a rock and come forward. The girl seemed amused when first she appeared; but a frown was on her brown face as she approached the girl prisoner and the young chief.
“The Wind Flower!” gasped the young chief, speaking below his breath. “What does she here?”
“Oh, mighty chief,” she said in mockery, “where is thy horse? I see it not. The eagles must have carried it away!”
He regarded her uneasily. “Wind Flower has taken it,” he said. “Where has she placed it? And what does she here?”
The Indian girl laughed again, a rippling laugh that had in it something of the music of running water, for it seemed to bubble and gurgle in her brown throat. Yet that suspicious and questioning light remained in her eyes.
“I found the horse of the great chief, Lightfoot! I am but a squaw—not a mighty warrior and hunter. But I could have taken his horse and ridden it far from here, if I had willed. The mighty young chief[148] is like the bear that sleeps when the winter winds blow; he does not see, and he does not hear. An enemy might have taken his scalp, as well as his horse.”
He shifted nervously on his feet under this rebuke, and looked at her furtively as she turned to Lena Forest, throwing out one brown hand in a significant gesture.
“Where is the young chief taking the white woman?” she asked, and at the question jealousy flashed in her dark eyes.
Lena Forest understood this language of the eyes, even though she could not understand the words. Jealousy is the same, and expresses itself much the same way; whether it burns in the heart of a white woman or of an Indian maid. She saw that this Indian girl loved Lightfoot, and guessed that she was probably his promised wife. The discovery, if it was a discovery, gave her hope.
She stretched out her hands to the Indian girl.
“Oh, tell him to let me go!” she begged, in pitiful tones. “You are a woman and can sympathize with me. Ask him to let me go!”
Wind Flower looked at her curiously, while a red flush crept into her brown cheeks, giving them an added beauty.
“Why white girl here?” she said, speaking English with difficulty, and giving the words a queer pronunciation. “Why white girl with Lightfoot?”
Lightfoot himself answered her.
“It is at the order of the great chief, Crazy Snake,” he explained. “The white girl is the prisoner of Crazy[149] Snake. He took her from her cabin, after the Blackfeet had killed her father, and he has ordered me to take her on to the Blackfoot village. She is to become the white squaw of the great chief, Crazy Snake.”
Wind Flower looked at him so sharply that it seemed the fire of her black eyes burned into his very soul.
“Does the young chief speak with the forked tongue of the serpent?” she demanded. “Does he not love the white girl, and does he not take her for himself?”
Lightfoot protested that this was not true, and repeated his assertion that he was but obeying the orders of Crazy Snake.
“Wind Flower has concealed my horse in the glen beyond?” he asked, finding that his protestations were not without effect.
“Perhaps it was stolen and is now far away!”
“I know it is in the glen beyond.”
He walked on into the glen, and there found not only his own horse, but the one which the Indian girl had ridden. When he returned he brought both with him.
Wind Flower sat on a stone, regarding the white girl distrustfully, while the latter was appealing to her with a multiplicity of words and gestures.
“We will go on together,” said Lightfoot, speaking to the Indian girl. “Why is Wind Flower here, so far from the village?”
“The chief sees the bow and the arrows on my horse,” she answered. “I hunted the deer, and he came in this direction, so that I followed. Then I[150] found the horse of the young chief, and from the top of the hill I saw the young chief and his prisoner.”
“We will go on together,” he repeated.
He turned his horse about and commanded Lena Forest to mount to its back. Then he walked beside the horse, leading it, while the Indian girl, assisting herself to the back of her own animal, rode at his side.
Lena Forest was buoyed somewhat with hope, since meeting this Indian girl; she believed that one of her own sex, even though an Indian, would be less heartless than a Blackfoot warrior.
The horses did not go fast enough to suit Lightfoot, and he dropped behind, and lashed them on with switches, running at their heels.
He still was not traveling as rapidly as he desired. Fear of Long Hair lay heavily on him.
“Will Wind Flower stay here with the white girl prisoner of Crazy Snake, while Lightfoot goes to the top of the hill?” he asked at length. He gave it as an order, though wording it as a question; and then began to climb the hill, leaving the two girls there on the horses. In a few moments he had disappeared from sight.
Again, with pleading words, the white girl began to beg for the assistance of the Indian.
A strange look was in the face of the Indian maid, and Lena Forest believed it denoted a yielding, and so her hopes rose swiftly.
Wind Flower drew nearer, forcing her horse close up against that ridden by the prisoner. She stared[151] with her black eyes into the brown orbs of the prisoner.
“The paleface loves the young chief?” she said, her voice tremulous. The words were articulated queerly, but their meaning was plain.
“No, no, no!” stammered Lena Forest. “That is a mistake. I do not love him—I am afraid of him. I want to go to the white people—my people. We can go now. We have the horses, and he is afoot. Let us go now. You are a woman. Help another woman who is in trouble.”
The black eyes looking into hers burned with a dangerous fire.
“The white girl lies!” said Wind Flower.
“No, no! My father was killed, and I am a prisoner. Let me go; help me to get away.”
“Would the white girl go to the white people?”
“I swear it! Oh, I swear it! Help me to get away. Perhaps I can pay you in some way! Perhaps I can——”
“The white girl’s tongue is crooked as the tongue of the mother of all serpents! She loves the young chief. She would take him from Wind Flower. And for that she dies!”
She drew a knife and struck with sudden fury at the breast of the swaying girl before her. But her horse chanced to shift its position, and her blow fell short.
Lena Forest screamed in fear, and began to belabor her horse, urging it on.
As her horse jumped into motion, the wild thought[152] that perhaps she could now escape came to her; and she beat the horse with her hands and kicked his side with her heels. He started into a quick jogtrot.
The Indian girl rode after her, and again tried to get near enough to strike with the knife. As she did so the bushes parted, and Lightfoot came bounding upon the scene.
He shouted at the furiously jealous Indian girl in anger, and, with quick bounds, caught the horse ridden by Lena Forest, throwing it back, with a heavy jerk on the bridle.
“Does Wind Flower love death?” he demanded of the Indian girl, facing her now, while holding the bridle of the horse ridden by the prisoner. “The vengeance of Crazy Snake is keen as his scalping knife. He will strike Wind Flower to the earth, if he knows of this. What does my little sister mean by it?”
The anger seemed to die out of the face of the Indian girl, to be replaced by a look of fear.
“The rough wind of the mountain blew on the head of Wind Flower, and it made her wild,” she said. “But the wind has passed, and she is well again.”
He shot her a keen glance.
“Be careful that the mountain wind does not strike the head of Wind Flower again,” he warned; “it might take it off, and roll it down the hillside!”
He glanced back along the trail, and then at the half-fainting white girl. He drew his hatchet and waved it in her face.
“We go on!” he said. “But the mountain wind still blows!”
[153]
Then he again got behind the horses and drove them on with switches, getting increased speed out of them.
The brown face of Wind Flower had assumed a dark, leaden hue, as wild emotions raged and burned in her heart.
[154]
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FLIGHT OF THE FUGITIVES.

That he might hasten along faster, and at the same time conceal his trail in the tracks made by horses that had passed, the crafty young chief soon left the rough and rocky hillsides, and entered the regular mountain highway that connected the town below with some of the mines above.
This was the trail which Lena Forest used in making her infrequent visits to the town. And when she saw it, and knew that her captor was intending to enter it, her hopes rose again, and gave her renewed strength.
Lightfoot was shrewd enough to know that since the Indian scare there was not much likelihood that any wayfarers would be encountered on that trail. What he feared were the men whom he believed to be following him—Buffalo Bill and his comrades, of whom Crazy Snake had told him, and against whom he had been warned.
Lightfoot was light of foot, as his name indicated; in truth, he was a copper-colored Mercury, so fleet of foot and untiring was he. Fast as he could drive the horses on, he had no trouble in keeping at their heels.
He drove them down the trail, which here curved and wound round and over the hills, dipping and rising and losing itself in many a charming spot.
Lena Forest looked hungrily ahead, whenever a rise of the trail gave her an extended view, always hoping to see there white horsemen.
[155]
At first this crafty maneuver of Lightfoot’s puzzled her, for he seemed to be going toward the town, when she naturally anticipated that he would wish to keep as far from it as possible. But soon she began to understand, when she saw, by glancing back, that the hoofprints of the horses and his own moccasin tracks were lost in the other tracks, which, in such numbers, had beaten the ground hard as flint.
She saw, too, that it was probably his purpose to leave this main trail at some point, after utilizing it all he could, and that he would then strike again into the rocky hills, and hold his course toward the Blackfoot village.
The white girl and the Indian maid talked little as the horses were thus driven on. Lena Forest had about lost hope of being able to persuade this Indian girl to help her; and she thought it not wise, anyway, to express her desires when Lightfoot could hear, for he had shown a pretty clear understanding of English.
Though the Blackfeet were now threatening a bloody war on the whites, there had been in the recent past so much intercourse and trading between the two races that most of the Blackfeet, men and women, had picked up a fair smattering of the language of the white men, so that they could understand it at least in its simpler forms.
By and by the fear of the pursuers he believed to be following became so strong in the mind of the young Indian chief that once more he left his prisoner in charge of the Indian girl, and stole away for the purpose[156] of climbing a hill, that he might look backward over the way he had come.
The place selected for leaving the horses and the prisoner was a dark hollow, where the trail made a quick bend round rocks, and where bushes, growing in each side of the trail, made good cover.
Those bushes shut him from sight of the prisoner and the Indian girl almost as soon as he started on his way.
Lena Forest was about to begin her petitions again, and was trying to summon enough courage to try to make an escape if there was another refusal, when the bushes near by rustled, and a young man stood forth, leveling a revolver at Wind Flower.
“Don’t move!” he commanded.
The face of the girl prisoner became white as chalk when she saw him, and she seemed about to slide in a faint from her horse; but she maintained her balance, and whispered:
“Bruce! Oh, save me, dear!”
The Indian girl became rigid as stone from fear; her black eyes opening in fright when she looked into the muzzle of that revolver. Her lips trembled and opened, as if she meant to call for help.
“Don’t move!” came the command again.
The young white man, dressed in miner’s clothing, stepped out quickly.
“Down from the horse!” he said, his voice low but commanding.
The words were addressed to the Indian girl; and, backed by the revolver, it seemed that she would[157] not dare to disobey them. Yet as she slid to the ground, she screamed aloud for help, and threw her arms round the neck of the young white man, surprising and handicapping him.
That scream, and the fact that her lover, Bruce Clayton, was there to help her, and needed help now himself, aroused the dormant energy of Lena Forest.
She caught the rein of her horse and jerked the animal toward the combatants—for at the moment the white man and the Indian girl were struggling in lively conflict—and then she tried to get down and go to the youth’s assistance.
The horse gave a jump, being frightened, and she fell to the ground. This scared the other horse. He, too, gave a rearing plunge, and went clattering down the trail, and out of sight beyond the fringing bushes.
“Let him go!” Lena Forest panted, as she dashed at the Indian girl.
But Clayton had caught hold of the Indian girl, and now he threw her from him. She staggered, and then fell to the ground.
Clayton caught the half-fainting white girl in his arms, and in another moment he was running with her along the trail, following the course taken by the scared horses.
On the hillside sounded a whoop, showing that Lightfoot had heard the outcry, suspected something of the character of what was happening, and was bounding down the hill.
Clayton had a horse below, at the side of the trail, concealed in a small grove; and for that grove he now[158] made lively tracks. He reached the horse, and threw his sweetheart into the saddle; then he sprang up himself, mounting with surprising speed and agility. Catching her close in his arms again, he drove the horse into the trail, and sped on.
Behind him he heard another whoop—an Indian war whoop now, telling him that the enraged redskin was pursuing, or, at least, that he would pursue instantly.
Clayton lashed the horse; and, in spite of its double burden, it fairly flew along the winding trail.
“We’re all right!” he said to the girl he clasped in his arms. “I don’t understand it, but you’re safe now, Lena; and I think God must have sent me along the trail at just that time, that I might save you from that wretch.”
She shuddered, put her arms round his shoulders, and nestled closer to him.
It seemed a delightful dream—this sudden transition from her position as the prisoner of a painted Indian into the arms of the youth she loved, and whom she had promised to marry.
“You’re all right now?” he demanded.
“Yes,” she whispered; “only—only terribly frightened!”
“Still frightened? You’re safe now as can be.”
“I mean that I—I was frightened and I’m so weak that I don’t think I could walk; but this is heaven, after that—after I thought I was to be taken to the Blackfoot village, and there forced to become the squaw of an Indian.”
[159]
“That young Indian chief?”
“No; Crazy Snake!”
“The infernal villain! He was with that young chief? I didn’t see him.”
“But he captured me—slipped on me in the house, after father was killed, and——”
“Your father dead?” He was shocked at the sad news.
“Yes—dead—dead!” She sobbed again. “He was killed by the Blackfeet, and——”
She choked and could not go on.
“Tell me about it,” he urged.
She told him, brokenly, and in as few words as she could.
He was silent a while, his eyes fixed on the trail, and his hearing strained backward in anticipation of pursuit.
“I knew the Blackfeet were rising, and I heard you had been in town,” he said. “So I thought I’d ride out, and have a talk with you and your father; for I thought it wasn’t any longer safe for you to stay out in that lonely place.
“That’s how I happened to meet you on the trail. I saw the Indian coming, driving the two horses; but, truly, I didn’t know then one of the persons riding was you.
“I didn’t know what to expect of the Indian; so I hid my horse in the grove, and went into concealment myself at the bend in the trail; for I didn’t know but I might be needed, seeing that the riders of the horses seemed to be women.
[160]
“When I saw that you were one of them, I was too astonished for anything. And then the Indian went up the hill; and——Well, you know the rest.”
“Oh, you are so brave!” she said.
“Not I. You see, anybody would have done that; and when I saw that it was you, I’d have died there fighting that rascal to get you away from him.”
“If he gets those horses, he’ll follow us,” she said, glancing back along the trail.
“He’ll follow, anyway, I think, horses or no horses; and some of those Indians can run like antelopes. The trouble is, he’s likely to get help.”
“He is a good runner.”
“He didn’t insult nor abuse you?”
“No; but I was dreadfully afraid of him. The girl was jealous of me.”
“Jealous?”
“The young chief is her lover, I think; and she fancied he was taking me to his wigwam.”
He laughed then.
“It was no laughing matter,” she said.
“No, of course not; very far from it. But it’s amusing to think she could be jealous of you.” He drew rein suddenly. “Hello! There are Indians down below. Blackfeet, too, and they’re coming this way; but I don’t think they’ve seen us. We’ve got to leave the trail and get into the hills here.”
He looked for rocky ground, and drew the horse out upon it.
The knowledge that another peril confronted her served to make Lena Forest more courageous. She[161] released herself from her lover’s arms, and sat upright, shifting to a position behind him, where she would less hamper his movements. He chose rocky ground for the horse, and went on as fast as he could.
“We’ll be all right until these Blackfeet meet that young chief. And then they’ll learn about us, and, of course, will follow us at once.”
“They’re mounted, too!”
“Yes, on Indian ponies; and those ponies are better able to climb about these rocky hills than this big horse is. We must get as big a start of them as we can.”
He drove the horse on without mercy, forcing it at a swift pace over the rough country, trying all the time to pick ground that would leave a poor trail.
As they thus rode on they heard the wild war whoops that announced either their discovery, or that the Indians had encountered the young chief, Lightfoot, and learned from him what had occurred.
“Now, we must ride—ride!” said Clayton, and he bent forward in the saddle, lashing the horse on, and using the spurs mercilessly.
Again the wild yells of the Blackfeet broke forth.
“They may be yelling for some other reason,” she said, trying to encourage her lover.
“Yes; they may have sighted Cody and Pawnee Bill,” he assented. “There’s no telling; but they’ve struck something, some trail or some enemy, and, like a pack of hounds when the game is scented, they can’t help yelping.”
The path grew rougher, if that can be called a path[162] which was more than half the time but a broken game trail, that played out and began again in the most eccentric manner. They had gained a high shoulder of the hills, and below them lay open country, that stretched on into illimitable distances, where there was much coarse grass.
“There is one way of defeating those scoundrels—of keeping them from seeing our trail,” said Clayton, at last; “and that is to burn it.”
“Burn it?”
“Yes; ride down into that, and fire the grass, and then make our flight behind the fire and the smoke.”
“And have the fire overtake us and burn us to death! But try it; I’d rather be burned to death than to fall into the hands of those awful and merciless Blackfeet.”
He guided the horse down the slope and on toward the grassy levels that lay beyond. Ten minutes later he was well out in the grass.
Here he stooped from the saddle, pulled a handful of dry grass, to which he applied a lighted match, and then threw it down.
While he did this the horse stood panting, sweat dripping from it.
Young Clayton had seen that he must do something desperate, if he escaped the Blackfeet; and this was the thing he was now to try.
The burning grass communicated fire to that surrounding the horse. Clayton sent the animal on, and with a few leaps it left the conflagration behind it.
[163]
The remarkable manner in which the fire spread through the dry grass was worthy of comment. It flamed up with a roar. Seeming to create a wind from the rising currents of heated air, the fire began to run before the breeze, leaping along in an amazing way.
It spread round from the spot where it had been started, burning backward toward the hills and outward in the direction taken by the horse.
“Now, for a race!” thought Clayton, struck by a sudden fear, as he saw how fast the fire was spreading. “Maybe that will be worse to get away from than the Blackfeet; and if anything should happen to the horse we’ll have to run for our lives!”
He voiced none of this to the girl.
“The Blackfeet haven’t been sighted yet,” he said to her. “They’ll know, of course, or guess, that we’ve taken to the grass, and set it on fire; but after that black smoke gets to rolling and the fire to running good, it will be hard for them to tell where we have gone, and I defy them to follow our trail after the fire has burned the grass.”
Before he had ridden a mile the fire was flaming in high billows behind him, and the smoke, black and thick, filled the sky.
Clayton began to be somewhat alarmed.
In desperation he had entered this grassy land and had fired the grass, but he seemed not to have bettered his position, in spite of the blaze. Indeed, if the fire ringed him in, or overtook him, his situation would be worse than before.
[164]
Though his face paled, he spoke hopefully to the girl who clung to him.
The Blackfeet were still unseen; and, indeed could hardly have been seen now through the pall of smoke and the billowing flame, even if they had come riding straight down from the hills in chase.
The horse was a gallant animal, and was standing up splendidly to the work, yet the strain was beginning to tell. Its sides were heaving, its head was sunk low, and its whole body was covered with a white lather of sweat. Its nostrils gaped wide and red as it plunged onward.
If the horse had been fresh, the hopes of Bruce Clayton would have mounted high, for its gait was faster than the running advance of the fire; but the horse was becoming exhausted. It had been tired even before he encountered the young Indian chief, and since then he had driven it hard.
Three miles away, and lying along the rocky rim of the ca;on which held the river, was a long strip of woodland.
On the other side were the hills.
The open, grassy country lay straight ahead between these two.
The speed of the fire, as it now pursued him, admonished Clayton that safety demanded he should not hold to the straight-ahead line. The fire would run on indefinitely, but the horse could not do so. The Indians were in the hills when last he heard them; and for that reason chiefly he turned the horse toward the distant fringe of timber.
[165]
“We can make those trees without trouble, I think,” he said, encouraging the girl, whose terrified backward glances he had observed.
“But the fire is coming very fast!” she said.
“And we are riding fast!”
“But it is gaining on us. The horse has lost speed in the last mile. The poor thing is exhausted.”
“Still, I think we can reach those trees. We’ve got to do that.”
The horse stumbled, bringing a cry from the girl; but righted, and galloped heavily on. Soon it stumbled again.
Then before them they beheld a yawning rent in the earth, like a large and deep ditch. It was in fact a dry waterway, cut by rains that came in some torrential storm down from the hills. It was impossible to go round this gap in the earth.
Driven by spur, whip, and voice, the tired horse tried to leap it. It rose in the air, making a gallant effort, but lacked strength to carry it across, and went falling down, down, into the great gully.
Lena Forest screamed as the horse took that plunge.
Clayton gripped tightly the rein, caught hold of the horn of the saddle, yelled for the girl to cling to him, and steadied himself for the shock of the fall.
The horse struck with stunning force, and rolled over, throwing the girl to one side.
Clayton was hurled from the saddle over the horse’s head, where he lay, unconscious and white-faced.
Lena Forest scrambled up unhurt, but dazed and[166] frightened. Then she screamed again, as she saw Bruce lying there as if he were dead.
And on came the fire, roaring and writhing, shooting up crackling flames that seemed to laugh in glee, as if they realized the terrible predicament of the girl and her brave lover.
[167]
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SCOUTS’ PURSUIT.

Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill, or Kulux-Kittibux, as he was known among the Indians, after the departure of Nick Nomad, began a search along the ca;on stream. They left their horses behind them, for the ground was too rough for a horse to get over it.
The thing for which the eagle eyes of the scout were searching was seen by him at last, when he began to despair of finding anything of the kind.
“There it is, Gordon,” he said, pointing.
What seemed a foot section of twisted vine rose from the water, and was wound in the most natural manner round the root of a tree.
Buffalo Bill scrambled toward it, and soon had his hand on it.
“Yes, just as I thought,” he said, and he began to pull on the thing.
Soon it lengthened, and a sunken canoe rose into view. It had been sunk cleverly there by its Indian owner; and the painter of time-stained rawhide, twisted round the root in imitation of a vine, the Indian had felt sure could not be distinguished from an actual vine.
The canoe was drawn from the water, and the water poured out of it. Then the two friends entered it. Buffalo Bill took up the paddle that had been lashed to the canoe, and turned the bow down the stream.
They ran the rapids successfully.
[168]
Because of the speed with which the current hurried them on, and also because of the cleverness of Crazy Snake, they did not see where he had concealed and sunk the canoe in which he had gone down the stream; but swept on past it, and soon again were in rapids that bore them farther and farther from that spot.
Finally they abandoned the canoe, after sinking it and marking the place, and went along the banks of the ca;on stream, trying to find the trail of Crazy Snake.
“He’s been too much for us,” the scout admitted, when, after long searching on either shore, and for a long distance up and down the river, they were still in the dark. “The rascal was Crazy Snake, I don’t doubt; and he’s one of the cleverest and least crazy of all the Blackfeet.”
As they continued this search, they saw black smoke roll up from the wide stretch of low grassland that fell away from the foot of the hills.
Trees and hills intervened to keep them from at once seeing the fire which gave birth to the smoke.
When they climbed a hill, and the scout leveled on the grassland his field glasses, the smoke and fire had attained such volume that the fugitives riding away before the flames were not visible to him.
Nor could he and Pawnee Bill detect any Indians out there, or in the hills adjacent.
“What’s the meaning of it, Cody?” Pawnee Bill asked.
The scout could not tell him. There were many ways in which such a fire might have started.
[169]
The thing was so suggestive, however, that the scouts hung about the edge of the grassland, close down by the river, a long time, looking for Blackfeet along the slopes of the hills.
At length they were astonished by seeing a young man come staggering out of the ca;on and running toward them.
He had seen them, and was trying to reach them. As he drew nearer, they saw that his face and hands were blackened, as if by fire or smoke; and he not only staggered, but fell, as he came on.
“Blackfoot deviltry, I reckon!” said Pawnee Bill.
They ran to meet the young man.
Pawnee Bill now recognized him as the thoroughly reformed youth he had met in the town the day before, and with whom he had talked on the subject of a probable Blackfoot uprising.
“Why, it’s Clayton,” he said. “Pool Clayton. He’s hurt, I think.”
Clayton was gasping from the effects of his violent run. As soon as he reached them he began to tell his story, and it amazed them:
“The girl whose father you were burying,” he said; “the girl who was carried away by Crazy Snake from the cabin, she——”
He stopped, choking for breath.
“Yes; go on!” the scout begged.
“I found her in charge of a young Indian called Lightfoot, who had an Indian girl with him; and I took her away from them. They followed us, and other Blackfeet chased us. We took to the grass[170] country, which I fired, thinking thus to hide the trail of my horse. We were both riding one horse. But the horse was weakened by the long run from the fire, and finally fell into a deep gully, in trying to leap it.
“I struck on my head, and didn’t know anything for a while. When I came to myself the girl was gone. I couldn’t find any trail, or anything; and I don’t know what became of her, or what to make of it. The girl was Lena Forest, and she said you——”
He stopped again, coughing and out of breath, but he had told enough to stir them into the most intense interest.
“Guide us to that gully,” said Buffalo Bill.
They started at once, Clayton, telling more of his story as they hurried on.
His smoky, grimy appearance was caused by the fact that in reaching them he had passed through a portion of the burned area.
He conducted them as quickly as possible down the ca;on, and then out into the burned grassland, to the spot where his horse had tried to leap the deep gully, and had fallen into it.
The horse was found there, dead, for in its fall it had received injuries which killed it.
Clayton and the scouts, in gaining this spot, followed the gully from the ca;on, thus remaining below the level of the grassland; a fact they counted on to keep them out of sight of any Blackfeet in the hills.
The young man showed them where he had fallen, and where he had searched, after his return to consciousness.
[171]
They took up the work where he had dropped it, giving to it their great skill.
There were no tracks visible at first in the burned grass; but when they had gone up the gully some distance they found an Indian trail. Two pairs of moccasins had come down from the hills to that point, where they had entered the gully.
As they had not climbed out of the gully on the other side, it was certain they had either gone back, or up or down it.
They had not gone back, and the scouts began to search the gully closely.
Then they found faint traces of the moccasin tracks on the hard soil, with the toes pointing down the gully.
Following this faint trail, they discovered that the Indians had reached the point where now lay the dead horse.
The rest was plain. They had captured the girl and taken her on with them; and, being in a hurry, through fear, perhaps, they had not stopped to scalp the young white man who lay there unconscious, and whom no doubt they thought dead.
“They went with her to the ca;on,” was the declaration of Buffalo Bill, when he had spelled this out from the dim writing in the soil of the gully.
They hastened on to the ca;on, and soon reached it.
The stream roared and raced before them.
On the opposite side was a high, unscalable wall, showing conclusively that the Indians and their prisoner had not gone that way.
“Gone downstream,” said Buffalo Bill; “and, of[172] course, they went in a canoe, for they couldn’t have done otherwise.”
There was nothing to do now but to retrace their way to where the scouts had sunk the Indian canoe, raise it, and set out down the river, following the blind water trail taken by the Indians and their captive.
The mental state of young Clayton may be imagined while this search was being made, and now when this canoe pursuit was begun. Yet he tried to be hopeful, and he was resolutely courageous.
He crouched in the stern of the canoe, wishing that he had in his own hands the stout ash blade which the scout was wielding so skillfully in the bow. He felt that the speed of the canoe was slow, very slow, though it was going as fast as the nature of the channel warranted.
Rocks jutted up in the stream here and there, and at sharp bends the rocks at the sides threatened the canoe as it swung round them.
Buffalo Bill gave his sole attention to the stream and to the paddle.
The other scout kept his keen eyes busy in searching the walls and the shores and the stream ahead, lest the canoe should be run into an ambush.
Soon the speed of the canoe ought to have satisfied even the wild anxiety of the young lover. The current had quickened again into cataracts that tossed and hurled the little craft about as if it were but an eggshell. The rate at which it flew on was enough to take the breath of the canoemen.
Buffalo Bill poised and dipped his paddle with rare[173] skill. It needed a good eye, a strong arm, and a steady brain, and he had all three.
A rock reared itself in the center of the stream, and the current threw the canoe at it, as if to split it in two; but the unerring paddle swept the canoe to one side, and the dangerous rock shot past, with the water boiling white round and over it. A swift turn of the channel threw the canoe over against the wall of dark granite, as if to smash it there; but again the paddle urged it back into the middle of the boiling water, and held it there, as it sped on with arrowy swiftness.
The ca;on walls came closer together, pinching in, confining the water, and increasing the strength of the current. The waterway grew dark, as if enveloped in twilight; yet the white water swirling and boiling over and round sharp, up-thrust rocks could still be seen, wherever the rocks lifted themselves like hungry teeth. Around these, dipping and paddling lustily, the scout guided the dancing canoe.
Clayton was hanging on as if for dear life, for now and then the canoe rose into the air and gave a leap as it took some cataract and shot on, the waters roaring about the canoe in a fearful din.
At last the ca;on opened, brightening ahead; and soon the worst of the perilous way was past, with smoother water opening before them.
Pawnee Bill watched keenly for some indications on the shore that would show that the captors of the girl had left the river with her here.
The boat moved on more slowly, to enable him to[174] do this; but no signs of such a disembarkation were to be seen.
Soon before the canoe loomed the darkness of another narrow reach of the ca;on.
“Shall we go into it?” the scout shouted.
“Yes,” said Pawnee Bill. “They haven’t landed here; so they must have gone on.”
The canoe shot, with dizzying swiftness, toward the dark opening, the current again running beneath the keel with race-horse speed, requiring, for the safe management of the canoe, all of Buffalo Bill’s marvelous skill with the paddle.
It was seen, when they were fairly in the dark opening, that here the ca;on roofed itself overhead; so that the river ran through a black tunnel, making thus practically an underground river.
Neither of the three men had ever been on this part of the river before; but Clayton recalled what some of his former associates, the outlaws, had told him of an “underground river,” called the Bitter Water, that cut through a ca;on in these mountains. He knew now that he was afloat on that underground stream.
What the result would be he could not foretell. But he recked not of the danger. If Lena Forest had been taken through it, he would not hesitate to follow; no, not even if it led him to death.
“Hold hard!” Buffalo Bill shouted, for the canoe was jumping and bucking like a wild horse. “Hold hard!”
Pawnee Bill could not use his eyes to much advantage in a search of the black walls; and as for[175] the young man, he had all he wanted to do to cling to his place as the canoe flew on.
The darkness became like ink, showing that the river was here completely walled in; and it seemed to him that the water grew rougher, while certainly its roar was much louder, due to its closed-in condition. The roar was thunderous now.
But on the canoe went, through the darkness and the howling noise, whether to destruction, or to be guided through to safety, Bruce Clayton could not tell.
[176]
CHAPTER XXV.
AGAIN A PRISONER.

Lena Forest had been recaptured by the handsome young chief, Lightfoot. By hard riding, he and a comrade had circled round the eastern end of the line of fire, only to find their horses exhausted by the terrible run and themselves driven back by the flames.
They abandoned their horses, and when the fire died down along the edge of the rocky hills, they set out across the burned area on foot.
They had become separated from the other Blackfeet, also, in the wild chase. Lightfoot had lost sight of the young Indian girl, Wind Flower.
His present companion was a young brave who stood ready to yield him obedience as a chieftain of the Blackfoot nation. With this young warrior, whose name was Red Antelope, Lightfoot came finally to the gully.
They could not leap it because of its width, and this fact induced the young chief to think that perhaps the horse of the white man had not been able to get across.
To break their trail, Lightfoot descended, with his companion, into the gully; and then they went on down, until they reached the point where Clayton’s horse had fallen.
They saw the girl bending over the prostrate youth, and the horse lying dead. She did not see them, so wrapped was she in her grief and in her frantic efforts[177] to restore life to the seemingly inanimate form of her hero.
Under the conditions, they had no trouble in approaching her and making her again a prisoner.
Lightfoot was on the point of lifting the scalp of the apparently dead white man, when a sound off in the distance made him think that enemies were near and haste was desirable; so he caught up the girl, and, with the aid of Red Antelope, bore her hastily toward the ca;on. There they brought to light a sunken canoe, which they emptied of its water, and set out down the ca;on stream in it, taking the helpless and almost insane white girl with them.
Of the running of the ca;on river, Lena Forest had afterward no very clear recollection. That recollection was like the memory of a hideous nightmare. The flying canoe, the water that boiled round the sharp rocks, the black shadows and the blacker ca;on tunnel, together with the painted faces and half-naked bodies of her Blackfeet captors, were things and shapes of terror from which she shrank in fright, cowering, and covering her eyes.
Her strength and the temporary heroism she had shown when with her lover had gone. She felt that death was better than this; and once, in her despair, she would have thrown herself into the river, if Red Antelope had not restrained her. He threw her down in the bottom of the canoe, with a cry of warning and anger, and then swung his hatchet menacingly before her terrified eyes.
Lightfoot, wielding the paddle, grunted assent to[178] this threat. In his eyes, a squaw should be made obedient, and fear and threats were good weapons for that purpose. If an Indian squaw was disobedient to her lord and master, she was flogged; and he, without compunction, would have applied a whip to this white girl, if he had thought it necessary. Women were wholly inferior creatures, and they might be stolen as a horse is stolen; and if so stolen, they belonged by right to the one who thus carried them away. It was Indian custom, and to the Indian mind that made it right.
So they gave scant attention to the tears and entreaties and the pitiful terror of the white girl thus dragged into a horrible captivity. Tears did not kill women. In their opinion, tears and crying were good for them; they often made the eyes brighter and washed the dust of the prairie from smooth brown cheeks!
After the passage of the underground river, the canoe shot out into comparatively placid water, with green banks on each side, between which it floated, until soon Blackfeet horsemen were seen, off on the right bank. These horsemen brandished lances and yelled as they came riding wildly toward the canoe.
Lightfoot stood up, waving his paddle, and then his hand.
He was immediately recognized. With a thunder of hoofs, and more yelling, the wild horsemen drew up on the bank as the canoe was shot to land.
Lena Forest, white-faced and fearful, regarded this array of naked warriors with dismay. But her heart was already broken, because of her belief that her[179] lover was dead. If these Indians would only kill her, she would not object, she thought. She feared captivity and Indian cruelty more than she feared death.
The horsemen were a part of Crazy Snake’s band. As for that chief, he was absent, and was said to be gone to get more warriors, with whom to resist the white men in the fight that all believed would now surely come.
Lightfoot, standing up in the canoe, with paddle raised, pointed to the prisoner.
“She is to be the squaw of Crazy Snake!” he said, in order to settle that matter once for all, as he saw a number of the younger warriors regarding her with admiring looks. “Crazy Snake placed her in my charge, to take to the village; and with Red Antelope I have got her thus far.”
In imperfect English he now ordered her to get out of the canoe.
When she did not move quick enough to please him, he caught her by the hair and half dragged her out.
Some of the warriors laughed, as if pleased, when this brutal treatment brought from her a cry of pain.
“We wait here for Crazy Snake,” one of the braves informed Lightfoot. “He was to meet us here with more warriors. What word comes from the white men?”
Lightfoot told them as much as he knew, or as much as he cared to tell them.
There were no lodges here, and but a temporary camping place had been made. The girl prisoner sat[180] on the ground, in the blazing heat of the sun, without shelter.
The warriors gathered around her, some with blankets drawn about their shoulders, but most of them only in war paint and feathers. They were merely disgusting brutes to her. Whatever others might see in them that was picturesque and attractive, she saw none of it. They were of the men who had murdered her father, and had taken her captive, and now held her here in their midst.
But most she thought of the fate of her lover, whose body, as she believed, had been left in that gully in the midst of the burned grasslands.
What the future held for her she shuddered to think, but she knew that death would be preferable to continued captivity with these savages.
The Blackfeet watched the shores of the stream and the ca;on a while, and also stationed warriors on the tops of the hills to report the approach of any one. They were waiting the arrival of Crazy Snake.
When he did not come as soon as anticipated, they made hasty preparations for departure, intending to ride farther down the stream to the Indian village. The white prisoner was to be placed there, and there were other reasons which now induced them to make this retreat. So far, no white men had been sighted by them.
Lena Forest had been anxiously hoping to learn that white men were coming, but her hope of that died away when she was placed on the back of a pony and was again borne away.
[181]
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WILD RANGE RIDERS.

The men whom old Nick Nomad gathered about him in the town were a wild-looking lot, yet typical of the border, particularly in the old days when Nomad was younger and was noted as one of the most fiery of the frontier Indian fighters.
Luck favored him, for there had come into the town of Crystal Spring, at the base of the mountains, a band of old-time bordermen, hunters, trappers, and wild-horse catchers, with whom he was personally acquainted.
It had been Nomad’s intention to pick up a company of men in the town, merchants, clerks, school teachers, stage drivers, bartenders, gamblers, anything he could get, even though he had small faith in the fighting spirit of a company thus collected.
But that intention was set aside when he saw Lawler and his wild range riders; and when they enrolled under him, as they did as soon as they understood his need and heard his appeal, the confidence of the old trapper rose many degrees.
“Waugh!” he said, seizing the hand of Bill Lawler himself, and shaking it as if it were a pump handle. “This hyar makes me think er ther time me an’ a lot of the boyees give ther Snake River Injuns sech a hustle. Lawler, ’twar Providence, and no mistake, thet sent you hyar now.”
[182]
He had fought Indians with Lawler, and had trapped and hunted with him; and this was true of many of the men who had come into Crystal Spring with Lawler.
As has been said, they were a wild-looking lot, as they gathered round old Nick Nomad and heard his story; and they declared their intention of “wiping out” the Blackfeet, if that were necessary. Among their arms, old-fashioned firearms prevailed, together with fringed hunting garments and beaver-skin caps. They carried hatchets and knives, after the Indian fashion, and the horses they rode were small, wiry Indian ponies.
Some of them had been drinking in the saloons, before the old trapper arrived and made his call for volunteers, and these hilarious ones were for riding straight to the Blackfoot village and sweeping it out of existence with fire and pistol.
“No!” said Nomad. “We goes fust thing ter Buffler, and then we does what he says. And I thinks we can’t git ter him any too quick ter please him.”
Night was at hand by the time Nomad had guided these wild range riders to the point where he had left Cody and Pawnee Bill.
Neither was there, and he had hardly expected that either would be. Nevertheless, the fact of their absence made it impossible for Nomad and his company of Indian fighters to push on during the darkness. They did not wish to overrun the scouts, who were supposed to be in advance, and Nomad was anxious to halt there, for the coming of Buffalo Bill.
[183]
The range riders sprawled themselves for the night along the edge of the hills, with the ca;on river roaring noisily below them.
No fires were built and no lights were shown. Guards were stationed. They were in the Blackfoot country now, and a night surprise was a thing to be watched against. Through the night sentries kept sharp watch; but the night passed without excitement or incident of any kind.
When morning dawned, with no enemy in sight, many of the range riders clamored to be led to the Indian village, which they desired to attack in their wild Bedouin fashion. But old Nomad had been with Buffalo Bill too much to believe that he would approve of a thing of that kind, and he held back the eager rangers.
“Waugh! I’ll take a look round,” he said, “and see what’s ter be seen, and mebbe diskiver what’s best ter be did. I’m lookin’ fer Buffler now ever’ minute. Ef he don’t come, then we’ll move on down ther stream, and try ter hit his trail and foller it.”
He rode away in the gray dawn on Nebuchadnezzar, promising to be back soon.
“I ain’t got no use fer Injuns no more’n they have,” was his thought, “and I’m agreein’ with ’em that ther only good Injun is a dead Injun; but, jes’ ther same, I knows thet Buffler would git hotter’n a limekiln ef I should let them wild men charge ther Blackfeet, as they want ter do. Ef Buffler’s fell inter ther hands of ther cusses, why, then thet’s diff’runt; thet puts ther responsibility and their commandin’ onter me. I[184] reckons ef thet has happened, we’ll be obleeged ter charge ther reds, and wipe ’em out, ’specially if they’ve done any wickedness ter Buffler.”
He passed on down the ca;on trail a long distance, looking carefully about, and searching for “sign.”
He saw pony hoofs and moccasin tracks, but they had been made early the day before, he judged, which indicated that the men and horses that had made them were not near.
Yet old Nomad was mistaking and underrating Blackfoot cunning in that; for, as he passed on, scanning the ground and glancing his keen, old eyes along the hills, a number of Blackfeet were watching him.
They were under the leadership of Crazy Snake, as cunning a rascal as had ever crept, serpentlike, through the defiles of those hills.
There was nothing crazy about old Crazy Snake but his name. He was shrewd, cunning, remarkably clear-headed for an Indian, and, altogether, a dangerous redskin. The name had been given him because of his ferocity in a certain battle, when, surrounded by an attacking party of Cree Indians, he had fought his way through and escaped, after killing and wounding many of them; he had fought as if he were a crazy snake, and that was his name ever after.
Crazy Snake was now just back from the trip he had made a number of miles to the northward, having made a headlong ride for the purpose of getting help from the Blackfoot village that lay at the big sink of the Powder River. He had secured the warriors he had gone for, and they were with him, and he was now[185] on his way to the lower village—his own village—where he meant to make a mighty resistance, if the white men came there to attack him.
When he saw, in the trail below, the old trapper jogging along on his old horse, Nebuchadnezzar, he knew from Nomad’s manner that he was searching for some trail, or for Indian “sign.”
Crazy Snake knew, too, that this old trapper was the friend and pard of the wonderful Long Hair, so feared by all the Western Indians.
When he had determined the direction that Nomad would take, Crazy Snake slipped away with several of his best warriors, and hastened to put himself and them in front of the trapper, in an endeavor to ambush him.
Nomad, however, turned around, as if he smelled the trap that was laid for him; and, after jogging along a short distance, disappeared from sight of the Blackfeet.
He had struck a trail that excited his curiosity. It was the plain trail of a white man, and the white man seemed to be wounded, or suffering. The tracks wavered here and there.
“Got an Injun arrer in him, I’m guessin’,” was Nomad’s opinion. “’Tain’t Buffler’s trail, ner Pawnee’s; and I dunno who it kin be. But whoever he aire, he aire white; and I’ll see what’s the meanin’ of it.”
The trail was fresh and plain, and he followed it rapidly.
It did not take him long to come in sight of a[186] small hut half hidden under a projecting ledge. The door was open, and the wavering trail led through the grass straight up to it.
“Some fool miner’s camped down hyar, and didn’t know thet ther cussed Blackfeet aire threatenin’ all white men’s ha’r!” was Nomad’s conclusion, as he left the trail, dismounted, and then approached the house carefully from the rear, looking into the hut through the one small rear window.
A man lay on the floor by the door, seeming to have fallen there through sheer weakness.
Nomad immediately went around to the door.
“Hello!” he said, stepping within. “Got some Injun lead in ye?” His tone changed to astonishment. “Bill Givens!” he cried. “Waugh! Ole pard, what’s ther meanin’ o’ this?”
The meaning of it was that Bill Givens, an old acquaintance of Nomad’s, was ill of measles, and in a dangerous condition. He had got home, and tried to get into the house and on his bed, but had fallen on the floor.
Nomad knew what the trouble was as soon as he looked in Givens’ splotched and fevered face; but he had no fear of measles; and, picking Givens up, he put him on the narrow bed, and then tried to do something for him to make him comfortable.
“Been ground-hoggin’ out hyar by yerself, eh? Tryin’ ter git some of the yaller gold thet everybody ’lows these hyar hills aire sloppin’ over with, eh? Waugh! You’d ought to ’a’ got out o’ this ’fore ther[187] measles hit ye, fer ther Blackfeet aire thick as flies round hyar, and aire likely ter make trouble.”
He was puzzled as to what he should do.
When he had worked over Givens a while, and had poured some hot water down his throat, water heated in the tiny fireplace, Givens came, in a measure, to himself.
He knew that Blackfeet were around in that locality, and now, seeing and recognizing his old trapper pard, he begged Nomad to take him down to the town, or at least away from the cabin so surrounded by Indian perils.
“It’s resky, but not so resky as you stayin’ hyar, even if somebody stayed hyar with ye, Givens,” said Nomad. “I reckon I kin help ye stick ter ther back of my ole hoss, and we’ll git ye back to whar ther rangers aire waitin’, and then have some of ’em stay by ye, er git ye to ther town. I never deserts an ole pard, Givens, and I’ll not desert you.”
Nomad got Nebuchadnezzar, and with some difficulty helped the sick man to mount to the horse’s back. Then he took the rein, and, with Givens swaying weakly in the saddle, he set out with him, striking the backward trail and hurrying on toward the camp of the rangers.
Meanwhile, Crazy Snake had not been inactive; he had drawn his cordon of Blackfeet warriors and descended into the trail.
Suddenly rifle shots rang out and bowstrings twanged.
[188]
Givens fell, with a bullet in his brain, tumbling heavily to the ground.
Bullets cut through Nomad’s clothing, and an arrow struck and stuck in his beaver-skin cap, its feathered end projecting from the fur, forming a strange-looking plume.
Nomad tried to turn Nebuchadnezzar around in the trail, but the Blackfoot rush was made too quickly; and, though he went down fighting, he was subdued, and made a prisoner, being beaten to the earth before he submitted.
Nebuchadnezzar pawed and squealed, rushed on the Blackfeet with his greenish teeth clicking and snapping, and lunged out with his twinkling heels; but Nebuchadnezzar, too, was made a prisoner.
Nomad’s effort to aid a needy friend had made him a prisoner of the Blackfeet.
[189]
CHAPTER XXVII.
AGAIN ON THE TRAIL.

Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill floated on down the ca;on river until they came to the open land beyond the “tunnel,” where they discovered indications that Blackfeet had been on the shores there not long before.
This made them wary; they could not be sure that all the Blackfeet were gone. Accordingly, they concealed their canoe, and searched the ground along the shore.
Bruce Clayton was with them, using his eyes as well as he could, but unable to “read” what he saw on the ground, seeing but hoof marks of horses, and some moccasin tracks in the damp soil by the margin of the river.
“They have retreated toward the village,” said Buffalo Bill. “Their village lies farther down the stream, and they have gone in that direction. The girl was taken with them, evidently.”
Clayton wanted to hurry on and do something at once to rescue her, but the wary scouts were not sure this was wise. They feared ambushes, and knew, also, that they were not in force strong enough to take the girl from the village. Whatever they did they must do by craft.
Aside from this, Buffalo Bill was expecting soon the coming of old Nick Nomad, who had gone for assistance.
[190]
He now sent Pawnee Bill back to meet Nomad’s force and guide it on, and, with the anxious young lover, he began to follow the trail of the Blackfeet.
Avoiding all ambushes and pitfalls, but making slow progress, the scout and his young friend reached the vicinity of the Blackfoot village by the middle of the afternoon.
From a hillside some distance away the scout surveyed it with his glasses, and saw that the village was in a state of commotion.
“Impossible to do anything right now,” was his conclusion. “The warriors we’ve been following are there, and the village is aroused and is being put in readiness for a fight. It would be as much as our lives are worth if we should try to penetrate it now. We’ll have to await the coming of Nomad, and whatever help he has got together.”
“Perhaps I could go in after dark,” said young Clayton rashly.
“We’ll see,” was the answer. “Nomad may get here by, or before, that time.”
But Nomad did not come.
When darkness had settled over the earth the scout tried to enter the village, but was driven back by the keen-nosed dogs, that swarmed everywhere, watchful and hungry as wolves.
“If only we could get some word to her!” said Clayton. “If we could let her know that friends are near, it would encourage her.”
“My attempt kicked up a good deal of excitement.[191] She may guess from that that friends are near. We’ll hope so.”
“But if only some direct word could be got to her!”
Clayton’s anxiety increased as the hours went by.
“If you can’t sleep, my boy,” said the scout after a while, “keep close watch while I take a try at it. I’ll be better to-morrow for a little rest to-night.”
“You don’t intend to attempt again to-night to reach her?” said Clayton.
“It’s impossible to do anything to-night, my dear fellow; the Blackfeet are too much excited and too wide-awake.”
When Buffalo Bill awoke, less than an hour later, Bruce Clayton was gone.
“The fool!” he said. “He’s certain to be captured, if he tries to get into the village.”
He rose and went again toward the village, filled with fear for his friend’s safety. He sympathized with Clayton’s anxiety to do something for the girl who was held by the Blackfeet, but at the same time blamed him for folly and disobedience of orders.
He had not gone far when wild yells and a noisy clamor told him that Clayton had been captured.
The scout stood still, listening to those telltale sounds.
“Just as I feared,” he thought. “It will be a wonder if they don’t kill him; and what good will his recklessness then do the girl?”
He moved on with quick steps, being guided by the wild clamor and by the flashing of lodge fires that were being rebuilt, or blown into new life.
[192]
Drums were soon booming in the council lodge, warriors were seen hurrying to and fro by the light of the fires, and feverish activity reigned.
The Blackfeet, having captured the young white man, were sure that he was a scout, and that a strong force of white men were near; and they were getting ready to meet them if they came.
The utter impossibility of entering the village without discovery was apparent to the experienced scout. Though he wanted to aid the youth, and also the girl, he saw that the attempt would have small chance of success, and if it failed his own fate would, no doubt, be sealed. Yet it required stern self-repression to remain inactive, knowing what was going on so near him, and the peril of the prisoners.
As Buffalo Bill lay close against the ground, screened by the darkness, he saw small bodies of Blackfeet leave the village, and knew they had been sent out to scout about, and, if possible, to locate the white men who were supposed to be near.
In going and coming these Blackfeet passed close to the scout; so close that he could hear some of their low-spoken words and the soft crunching of their moccasins. From what they said he discovered that Crazy Snake was not in the village, but was expected soon, and that the prisoners were being held until his coming.
“That’s good!” was his thought. “Crazy Snake wants the girl for his squaw, and these bloodthirsty rascals believe that he will give up Clayton to the torture[193] as soon as he arrives. Before that time comes perhaps I can do something.”
He slipped away from the village, and soon was hastening over the backward way, hoping to get in communication now with Nomad’s men and hurry them forward, and also eager to find Pawnee Bill.
However, he discovered that parties of Blackfeet were coming and going in the trail, and to avoid running into them he left it and entered the hills. This slowed his progress, and morning dawned before he had gone very far. Then, as he went on, he was given a crushing surprise.
He saw old Nomad, mounted on Nebuchadnezzar, in the midst of a body of Blackfeet commanded by Crazy Snake.
“Nomad a prisoner!” he said, with a groan. “What in blazes will happen next?”
[194]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CAPTURE OF THE MEDICINE MAN.

Unable to do anything to aid Nomad, who was surrounded by a strong body of warriors, Buffalo Bill continued his retreat toward the point where he hoped to, at least, find Pawnee Bill.
That sight of Nomad borne away by the redskins inclined him to think that the trapper had failed in his effort to get fighting men from the town.
But when he found Pawnee Bill, he found also the wild range riders whom Nomad had led into the hills. They had met Pawnee Bill, and had been waiting Nomad’s return, unaware that he had fallen into the hands of the Indians.
They greeted the noted scout with cheers. He was known personally to most of them, and by reputation to all. But their cheers changed to angry calls for vengeance when they learned what had befallen Nomad; and they asked the scout to lead them toward the village at once.
Buffalo Bill was pleased with the force that had been rallied by Nomad. As fighting men, they were the best of the border; and he believed they would be able to whip the Blackfeet even in a stand-up fight.
But the result to the prisoners was a thing that had to be taken into consideration.
If the Blackfeet were defeated in an open battle and driven back, the surviving remnant would seek shelter[195] in the mountains. But before retreating they would, without doubt, slay their white prisoners. Victory at such a cost of human life would be purchased all too dearly.
Nevertheless, Buffalo Bill now set himself at the head of the rangers, and led them at as rapid a pace as was safe in the direction of the Blackfoot village.
Lawler, the commander of the rangers, rode at the scout’s side, and so did Pawnee Bill.
As they went, they discussed the situation with reference to the safety of the prisoners, and agreed that by some strategy they should be reached and rescued, if possible. How the thing was to be done was the puzzle.
As the village was approached the rangers slowed their pace, and the two noted scouts were sent ahead.
They separated when in the hills overhanging the village, going in different directions, on the watch for Indian spies, and trying to ascertain the state of affairs.
When he had gone some distance Buffalo Bill dismounted and descended on foot a few yards, to where a slight rise offered a better view. He had got his field glasses and was preparing for a careful study of conditions in the village when he was aroused by a sound from his horse and by a sudden patter of moccasined feet. Turning about, he saw an Indian warrior running to get the horse.
Buffalo Bill did not wish to shoot the brave, lest the report of the shot should carry too far; so he rushed at the redskin.
[196]
The latter tried to leap to the back of the horse, but succeeded only in dislodging the scout’s rifle, which hung by its strap to the high pommel.
The horse reared, shaking off the Indian, and the Indian, seeing that he was in danger, turned about. He slipped and fell in his haste, dropping his shield of buffalo hide, but retaining his lance; and then he sprang away.
Buffalo Bill reached his horse, cut the lariat, bounded into the saddle, and gave chase, almost weaponless, though he had caught up the shield, which the redskin had dropped.
As he thus gave chase, the Blackfoot stood at bay, and when the scout tried to ride him down he hurled the lance straight at the scout’s broad breast.
Buffalo Bill dodged, and caught the Indian’s lance on the shield; otherwise, it would have gone through his body. But he rode the horse right over the warrior, and, lunging at him from the saddle, he caught the redskin by the throat, when both came to the ground together, the scout on top.
The fight that followed was furious and desperate, but of brief duration. When it ended, Buffalo Bill was the victor, and the Blackfoot brave lay panting on his back, the scout’s fingers clutching him by the throat.
The red warrior gurgled something which he meant as a word of submission and surrender, but the scout still held him in that choking grasp, not daring to trust him; and then, before the brave could get back enough[197] strength to resist, the scout had him bound tight and fast.
When the Blackfoot recovered sufficiently to talk, Buffalo Bill began to ask him questions, emphasizing them by a pointed revolver.
The warrior was sullen at first; but by and by he declared that his name was Spotted Deer, and that he was a subchief, who had been sent out there to meet and guide into the village a certain medicine man from another village, who was coming to drive away the evil spirits that were causing the Blackfeet to fall sick and die. In other words, this medicine man had been sent for in the belief that he could charm away the measles that had attacked so many of the Indians.
“I think I want to meet that medicine man,” said the scout to himself, when he had heard the story. Therefore, he went into hiding, with his prisoner bound and gagged, his horse concealed some distance away, and waited with as much patience as he could for the appearance of the medicine man.
As he thus waited, he shaped the plan that had come to his fertile mind—a plan that promised aid to the imperiled prisoners.
Within less than an hour the medicine man came in sight, advancing down the trail that here descended from the higher mountains.
Spotted Deer, though bound and gagged, struggled and gurgled, in an effort to warn the medicine man of the danger he was in, and he threw himself about in such a manner, in spite of the scout’s warnings to him to desist, that he attracted the medicine man’s[198] attention. Yet the result of his strenuous efforts was not what he had hoped.
The medicine man turned toward the bushes where he beheld the commotion, stepping with Indian lightness of foot, and when he parted the bushes to look in, he found himself looking into the deadly tube of a revolver, with the dreaded Long Hair behind it threatening him.
“Do not try to turn!” the scout commanded in Blackfoot; “for, if you do, I shall shoot you.”
The medicine man surrendered without a word, seeing that death would be the result if he refused. Then he discovered the bound form of Spotted Deer.
Buffalo Bill kept him covered with the revolver, and with Indian stoicism the medicine man sat down.
“Now, your knife!” commanded the scout.
The Blackfoot produced the weapon and placed it on the ground. His hatchet was the only other weapon he possessed, and that he also surrendered.
Then the scout searched him.
Under his blanket the medicine man had what may be called the tools of his trade—his medicine rattle and drum, pigments and paints of various kinds, his medicine bag, together with plumes, beadwork, and other adornments.
When he had possessed himself of these, Buffalo Bill tied the medicine man, and bound him to the other captured Blackfoot. Then he tied to the saddle on the back of the horse the articles taken from the medicine man, and, leading his horse, he drove the two Indians[199] before him along the trail in the direction from which he had come.
An hour later Buffalo Bill reached the wild range riders, without mishap, with his prisoners and spoil, finding that Pawnee Bill had not yet appeared.
But Pawnee Bill came in soon, while the scout was explaining and elaborating the plan he had conceived for the relief of the white prisoners of the Blackfeet.
It was so daring, however, that when Pawnee Bill heard it even he opposed it; for the plan was nothing less than that Buffalo Bill should paint and disguise himself and enter the Blackfoot village, pretending to be the medicine man whom the Indians were expecting.
But when Buffalo Bill had painted himself with the paints taken from the medicine man, had arranged his hair in the Indian fashion and ornamented it with plumes, had put on the clothing of the medicine man, wrapped himself in the medicine man’s blanket and robes, and arrayed himself, with tom-tom, medicine rattle, and other articles, even Pawnee Bill’s skepticism vanished.
“It almost frightens me to look at you now, Cody,” he said, with a laugh. “If you can get into the village in the night rigged out in that way, I think you can fool even old Crazy Snake himself. But we shall stand ready to rush the village if anything happens to you. Give us the signal—two wolf howls from the village—and we’ll charge the redskins, whatever the cost.”
The range riders were as enthusiastic as Pawnee[200] Bill had now become, and though they were themselves somewhat experienced in such trickery, they marveled at the skill shown by Buffalo Bill in this transformation.
With the approach of night the range riders advanced toward the village, with scouts out in front to guard against surprise and ambush. But they stopped in the hills above the village.
Then, as night came on, dark and cloudy, Buffalo Bill descended from the hills. He knew the terrible danger to which he was now to expose himself—that he was taking his life in his hands. Yet he did not hesitate at this call of duty.
[201]
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE COMING OF THE MEDICINE MAN.

Lena Forest’s position in the Blackfoot village could hardly have been worse, for the malignity of two jealous Indian women was turned against her in every possible way to make her suffer.
These two women were Wind Flower and Wide Foot, the wife of Crazy Snake. Wide Foot had been told that Crazy Snake, her lord and master, was to install the new white squaw soon in his lodge, and that was enough to fill her heart with bitter enmity against the inoffensive white girl.
As for Wind Flower, she could not rid herself of the belief that Lightfoot, the handsome young chief who had promised to marry her, was stricken with the charms of the white girl prisoner. And as Lightfoot would probably be made head chief in the event of the death of Crazy Snake, Wind Flower saw herself at some future time dispossessed, as Wide Foot seemed about to be now.
Lena Forest had been placed in Crazy Snake’s lodge in charge of Wide Foot, who was ordered to care for her, and to see that she did not escape; and this Wide Foot was commanded to do on peril of her own life.
Though fear of Crazy Snake, whose anger was a thing to be dreaded, was enough to keep Wide Foot from doing the white girl harm of a serious character, it did not prevent her from annoying the prisoner in many ways.
[202]
At times both Wide Foot and Wind Flower would sit in the lodge entrance and make sport of the prisoner, grimacing, giggling at her, making faces at her, even spitting at her, to show their hatred and detestation.
Wide Foot even refused to give her food and water, withholding them until the white girl was fairly famished.
When Bruce Clayton was captured by the Blackfeet and brought into the village, Lena Forest’s prison-keeper tried to prevent her from knowing it. But the knowledge could not be long withheld. The Blackfeet were altogether too jubilant over the capture, and made too great a noise about it.
Lena Forest discovered that a prisoner had been brought in. When she tried to get out of the lodge, and was thrown back by Wide Foot, and then heard Bruce’s loud voice raised in anger at some insult, she hurled Wide Foot aside, and dashed out of the lodge.
She saw her lover seated on a horse, to which he was tied, with a band of howling redskins round him, composed, in large part, of frantic women and children.
But for a guard of warriors the angry squaws would have pulled Clayton from the horse and hacked him to pieces with knives.
Lena Forest tried to reach Bruce, hardly knowing what she did; for this sudden discovery that he was not really dead, but that he, too, was a Blackfoot prisoner, nerved her to the highest pitch of excitement[203] and recklessness. She had no thought of what she would do, or could do, if she gained his side; but was only possessed by an insane desire to get to him, and die with him, if she could do nothing else.
Wide Foot took savage delight in seizing her and dragging her by the hair back into the lodge. But the despondent girl had come to the knowledge that her lover was alive, when she had thought him dead, and the cruelty and abuse of the frenzied old woman made little impression on her now.
True, she feared now for Bruce’s life; yet while there is life there is hope, and that he had been spared thus far gave glimmerings of hope for the future.
When the old trapper, Nick Nomad, was brought into the village there was further wild commotion among the Blackfeet, of which the girl prisoner could not fail to have knowledge.
She was sure that Bruce still lived, and was held in some of the lodges.
She saw the trapper on his rawboned horse, as he was conducted past the lodge entrance in a sort of triumphal entry made by Crazy Snake himself; and from the shouts she knew that some big chief had arrived and guessed it was Crazy Snake. Then she saw Crazy Snake, and was sure of this.
Throughout the remaining hours, until darkness came, the girl prisoner tried to think of some means by which she might release herself and the other prisoners.
The wariness of the old squaw had increased since the coming of Crazy Snake. No more did Wide Foot[204] beat and abuse the captive, a thing she feared to do now, lest the vengeance of Crazy Snake should descend on her.
Lena Forest listened to the thumping of the drums in the council lodge, and to the fervid oratory of the warriors after nightfall. She knew that things of importance were being discussed in that big lodge, yet she could tell nothing of what was being said, even though much of the talk reached her ears, for she knew not a word of the language. Held close now under the eyes of the old squaw, the girl crouched in the half-lighted prison lodge, listening to this commotion.
Dogs barked, and papooses and squaws talked in the midst of the lodges. Warriors hurried to and fro, and Lena believed that scouts and spies were passing in and out of the village.
All of this made her think that perhaps white men were near, whom the Indians feared; and she thought of Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill, for whose coming she now prayed.
But when at length Buffalo Bill came she had no thought that he was a white man.
The daring scout had made his entrance into the village in the most natural way, riding into it on the back of an Indian pony, arrayed in a medicine robe and blanket, painted until his features were concealed, and with his mustache and imperial hidden beneath the folds of the blanket which he kept muffled up around his chin.
Only the upper part of his face, wonderfully striped[205] with paint, his feathered hair, and his eyes could be seen.
He announced his presence, before entering, by a series of wild yells, and a rattle of his medicine drum; and when the Blackfeet swarmed forth to meet him, he told them briefly, and in well-chosen Blackfoot words, that he was the medicine man who had been asked to come to conjure away the demons that were making the Blackfeet fall ill and die.
Peril of the most deadly sort confronted him instantly, for Crazy Snake stepped forth, and, looking keenly at him, said:
“This is not Wandering Bear, the great medicine man of the Blackfeet of the Sunken Lands?”
But Buffalo Bill was ready even for that.
“I am Whispering Elk, the Blackfoot medicine man from the far North,” he answered. “Wandering Bear has gone to the Blackfeet of the Sagebrush Valley, where there is much sickness, and I come in his stead.”
Crazy Snake, shrewd as he was, did not doubt that this was an Indian medicine man; but he had met Wandering Bear, and this man did not resemble him.
Buffalo Bill, on his Indian pony, was conducted toward the council lodge. Before it was reached, he was asked to stop at a lodge and cure a warrior stricken with measles.
While not believing that he could do anything more, perhaps, than give the stricken warrior hope, the scout descended carefully from the pony and entered the lodge.
The Indian braves, the women and children, and[206] even the suspicious sniffing dogs came close at his heels, filling the lodge which he entered.
The sick man, his face lighted by the leaping fire of the lodge, which had been stirred into new life, looked appealingly at the supposed medicine man.
For a minute, in the midst of a great silence, Buffalo Bill postured before the sick man. Then, with a quick motion, and some shouted words, he stooped and drew from under the skins that covered the sick man the stuffed skin of a weasel, which he had concealed under his robe. This he threw on the ground with a yell, and then beat and tore it into fragments, casting the fragments into the fire, that the Blackfeet might not too closely inspect them.
The Blackfeet yelled in hoarse joy and triumph when they beheld what they believed to be the body of the evil spirit, taking the shape of a weasel, that had vexed and sickened the warrior.
The warrior’s face glowed and his eyes brightened; and there was a certainty that, believing now he would get well, much of the battle against the disease had been already won by him.
As the scout came out of this lodge the girl prisoner, Lena Forest, saw him again; but he was still to her but a medicine man, a horrid and horrible creature, worse even than the hideous Indians who had surrounded her so much of late. She saw him go on toward the council lodge, and heard there the renewed beating of drums, and a repetition of the sounds of Indian oratory.
Buffalo Bill, in thus desperately entering the Blackfoot[207] village, hoped to locate the prisoners, and, later in the night, release them. If he was discovered, his own life would be the forfeit, he felt sure.
The risk was great, but the thing to be gained was great, for it was no less than the release of old Nomad and the other prisoners, thus saving their lives; for he was certain they would be slain by the Blackfeet, if the latter were forced to retreat by an attack of the range riders.
In the council lodge Buffalo Bill tried to conduct himself like a true medicine man. He yelled and danced, and besought the good spirits of the mountains to descend and assist him in driving out the evil spirits that were vexing the Blackfeet. But he did not dare talk too much, and much of his eloquence took the shape of pantomime, in which he used wonderful gestures, always keeping the folds of the blanket over the lower part of his face—which gave him an additional air of mystery to the frenzied Indians.
He discovered that one thing the Blackfeet were anxious about was that he should confer on them some power, by a spell or charm, that would enable them to resist the bullets of the white men, whom they feared.
The scout gave them whatever assurances they desired, feeling that he could not safely do otherwise.
Finally he left the council lodge, declaring that the spirits had told him that, concealed in some of the lodges, were little demons, hid under buffalo robes, and even in the earth, who were working much evil, and he must find and destroy them.
His object, of course, was to pass from lodge to[208] lodge, in order to locate the prisoners, and if possible communicate to them knowledge of the thing he was trying to do.
The warriors streamed after him, and behind the warriors came the women and children, while the barking and sniffing dogs ran everywhere, yelping and snarling.
It did not take Buffalo Bill long to find out that Nomad and young Clayton were held together in a lodge near the medicine lodge.
“Now, if I can locate the girl,” he said to himself.
The braves were crowding round him, and he dared not say a word in English which would let Nomad and Clayton know who he was, and his disguise and his acting were so good that they did not recognize him. But he contrived to make himself known to old Nomad by a few words of Spanish, and he saw the old man stare in confusion and astonishment.
In a little while he found Lena Forest, crouching in the lodge where she had been held from the first.
At the entrance to this lodge stood old Wide Foot, who fell back when the terrible medicine man appeared before her.
Lena Forest started up, frightened by the entrance of the medicine man.
Not daring to use English, the scout said a few words in Spanish, wondering if she would understand. She uttered a cry of amazement, for she understood him—a cry which was fairly forced from her by her wild astonishment.
[209]
Buffalo Bill poked and peered, said a few words more to her in Spanish, the Indians thinking them words of invocation which they could not be expected to understand, and then he retreated.
As he did so, coming thus out of the lodge, he heard wild yells, and a rushing of feet. And then before him, bounding along, his eyes blazing and his whole being wrought to a frenzy, he saw the medicine man whom he had captured, and whom he was impersonating.
With yells of rage the medicine man rushed upon him, denouncing him, and screaming to the warriors that this was a white man, and must be beaten down and captured; that he was the terrible Long Hair himself!
It was like the explosion of a mine of gunpowder. Instantly, a dozen warriors sprang at Buffalo Bill, tearing the blanket from his shoulders, and yelling with rage as their enemy stood revealed.
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CHAPTER XXX.
THE DEFEAT OF THE BLACKFEET.

Wandering Bear, the medicine man captured by Buffalo Bill, was a shrewd old scoundrel, gifted not only with many natural qualities, but some acquired ones, for the part he played as medicine man of the Blackfeet.
Like most, if not all, medicine men among savage peoples, he resorted to tricks, some of them very clever; and one of his tricks was akin to that shown on many a theatrical stage to-day, the getting out of tightly set cords bound about his wrists and ankles.
For a long time after darkness fell, old Wandering Bear lay twisting quietly at the cords that held him.
He had seen Buffalo Bill paint and decorate himself and depart, and he guessed shrewdly what that meant.
Also he saw that the white rangers were close down to the village, in the scrub that covered the sides of the hills, and he was sure that an attack on the village was contemplated, and that the departure of the pretended medicine man had something to do with it and could mean nothing but harm to the Blackfeet.
He thought most of himself and his personal peril, as was but natural. What these white men would do to him eventually he did not know, but he anticipated nothing less than death. As for the other Blackfoot,[211] the one who had come to meet him and had been captured by Buffalo Bill, Wandering Bear paid slight attention to him; his own safety was the thing for which he longed and now worked.
At last the cords on his wrists fell away, and by some clever twisting he got his hands down to his ankles and untied the cords that held them.
After thus releasing himself, he lay a while, stretching his arms and legs, to get them in condition. Then suddenly he bounded to his feet with a startling yell, knocked over the ranger who stood close by him, and was gone like a shot out of a gun.
The rangers did not even fire a shot at him, for they did not wish to announce to the Blackfeet below that they were so close to the village. Yet they pursued the escaping medicine man, a pursuit that was hopeless from the first.
He disappeared, to appear in the Blackfoot village, leaping on and denouncing Buffalo Bill, to the amazement of the Blackfeet who heard and saw him.
Buffalo Bill knew that the game was up. If he escaped with his life he would have to move quickly, and do something desperate.
Instantly two wolf howls rose on the startled air, floating out to the wild range riders in the near-by hills. Then the scout struck down the medicine man, who was trying to seize him, and darted into the lodge of Crazy Snake.
Lena Forest was in there, and at the entrance was Wide Foot.
The intruder hurled the old hag sprawling; then[212] caught the girl by the hand and jumped to the rear of the lodge. His knife flashed, and a tearing sound followed, as he ripped the lodge skin from top to bottom, opening a way through.
“Come!” he said, and he pulled the girl along, while the howls of the Indians rose in a very pandemonium.
By diving thus through the lodge Buffalo Bill gained a slight start of his foes, but it was only enough to enable him to get out of the lodge and run toward the shadows of the next one, for the angry Blackfeet came swarming around the lodge and through it, yelling for his life.
He shaped his course toward the lodge where Nomad and Clayton were held, and gained it a few yards in advance of his pursuers.