Buffalo Bill's Pursuit; Or, The Heavy Hand of JusticeIngraham, Prentiss
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Buffalo Bill's Pursuit; Or, The Heavy Hand of Justice
Ingraham, Prentiss
Buffalo Bill, 1846-1917 -- Fiction; Dime novels
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 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 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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