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