“If I lie here I shall have to kill that Indian as I did the dog; and I’ll be discovered, no doubt, after which there will be the greatest row and hubbub here any one ever heard. I guess it’s time for me to sneak.” He did not “sneak,” however. He was still concealed from the approaching Indian by the intervening tent wall. So he arose boldly to his feet and as boldly walked on around the council lodge, away from the advancing redskin. Almost any other man would have jumped up and fled out through the village, trusting to his legs to carry him to a point of safety. But that would have involved risks which Buffalo Bill did not care to take. Hence he walked straight on. As he came out into the moonlight and toward the front of the council house, he was seen by one of the Indians who had stood talking near the lodge door. This Indian called to him, asking if he had heard the dog; for the blanket and the headdress made the Indian think the scout was another redskin. As the scout had heard the words that were spoken before the lodge door and had noted the tones of the voice, he answered, for he understood the Sioux language perfectly, and imitated almost to perfection the voice of an Indian. “The dog has gone off that way,” he said. “I think he is after a rabbit; I will see!” Then the scout broke into a run, as if he were hastening after the dog. He knew that now he would have to “cut sticks,” as he would have expressed it; and when he had another lodge between him and the Indian he had spoken to, he ran with all his might, yet as softly as he could. It was well for Buffalo Bill that he had moved thus promptly. For, as he ran, he heard a wild yell behind him, which told him that the body of the dog had been discovered. The yell stopped the dancing and the drumbeating as suddenly as if a rifle shot had been fired. The Indians poured pell-mell out of the council house. The yells that now sounded seemed to arouse all the village curs at once; and some of them discovering the hurrying figure of the scout, they rushed at him like a pack of wolves chasing a deer. But the scout was now on the edge of the village, and before him was the wild-timbered hills. Turning suddenly as the foremost of the dogs pressed him and began to snap at his heels, he cast aside the blanket and the headdress and lifted his revolver. They were plainly to be seen in the moonlight. Two shots sent the leaders rolling in their death agonies, and so startled the others that they drew back, thus giving Buffalo Bill a clear path again before him. Then arrows began to sing and rifles to bark as the Indians, guided by the yelping of the dogs, and knowing now that an enemy had invaded the village, began to fire in the direction of the scout’s flight. But the missiles went wild. Their singing and hurtling in the trees seemed, however, to increase the scout’s speed, so that he almost flew, selecting the wildest and rockiest course for the line of his retreat.