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 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 cañon 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. 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.