“Red Cloud has been captured by the Cave Dwellers, and carried off to one of their inaccessible caves in the mountains,” he said. “We fear that they are saving him to offer up as a sacrifice at their great feast of Toshak, five nights hence, and that then they will devour his flesh, and so disgrace our tribe and the bones of our ancestors forever.” Buffalo Bill recoiled in horror at this news, for he had grown to like the young Indian extremely, on account of his high courage and manly qualities. “How did this happen?” he asked. “Where were your braves, that they allowed their chief to be captured?” “Blame us not, oh great white chief,” said Eagle Eye, “although in truth I sometimes blame myself. Yet I could not help it. “Red Cloud went by night to visit the graves of his father and uncle and pray to the Great Manitou to give him wisdom and strength to rule properly over the tribe. It was his custom to do this once every moon. “Knowing that the Cave Dwellers had sought his life many times, I begged him to let me accompany him to the graves and watch over his safety while he prayed. But he would not permit it. He strictly commanded me not to follow him, saying that he must be alone with the spirit of his father. “When day dawned he had not returned to the village, and I began to grow alarmed. After an hour had passed I went to the burying place with six other braves. Red Cloud had disappeared, but two dead Cave Dwellers lay on the ground near his father’s grave. “There had been a fierce struggle, as the marks on the ground plainly showed; but the Cave Dwellers were more than twenty to one, and at last they had overpowered him and carried him away to one of their caves. “Following swiftly on their trail, we found this message, which he had managed to write and drop on the path when they were not watching him closely.” Eagle Eye handed to the border king a fragment of white cloth, evidently torn from the Navaho chief’s shirt, on which was written, in Indian hieroglyphics with the man’s own blood, the following brief but appealing message: “Tell my brother, Long Hair.” Buffalo Bill’s heart burned within him with rage against the Cave Dwellers as he read these words, and he registered a mental vow to do all that a man could do to save his blood brother from their clutches. “We could not catch the Cave Dwellers before they reached their mountains and ascended to their lofty retreats,” said Eagle Eye, continuing his story. “It was hopeless to try to follow them there, for they had many sentries posted on rocky ledges on the hillside. These sentries shook their spears at us and shouted their defiance. “We would have ascended, but we could find no path by which to climb. Every time we followed one, we found it terminated in a sheer wall of rock or a precipice.