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
These two women were Wind Flower and Wide Foot, the wife of Crazy
Snake. Wide Foot had been told that Crazy Snake, her lord and master,
was to install the new white squaw soon in his lodge, and that was
enough to fill her heart with bitter enmity against the inoffensive
white girl.
As for Wind Flower, she could not rid herself of the belief that
Lightfoot, the handsome young chief who had promised to marry her,
was stricken with the charms of the white girl prisoner. And as
Lightfoot would probably be made head chief in the event of the
death of Crazy Snake, Wind Flower saw herself at some future time
dispossessed, as Wide Foot seemed about to be now.
Lena Forest had been placed in Crazy Snake’s lodge in charge of Wide
Foot, who was ordered to care for her, and to see that she did not
escape; and this Wide Foot was commanded to do on peril of her own
life.
Though fear of Crazy Snake, whose anger was a thing to be dreaded,
was enough to keep Wide Foot from doing the white girl harm of a
serious character, it did not prevent her from annoying the prisoner
in many ways.
At times both Wide Foot and Wind Flower would sit in the lodge
entrance and make sport of the prisoner, grimacing, giggling at her,
making faces at her, even spitting at her, to show their hatred and
detestation.
Wide Foot even refused to give her food and water, withholding them
until the white girl was fairly famished.
When Bruce Clayton was captured by the Blackfeet and brought into
the village, Lena Forest’s prison-keeper tried to prevent her from
knowing it. But the knowledge could not be long withheld. The
Blackfeet were altogether too jubilant over the capture, and made too
great a noise about it.
Lena Forest discovered that a prisoner had been brought in. When she
tried to get out of the lodge, and was thrown back by Wide Foot, and
then heard Bruce’s loud voice raised in anger at some insult, she
hurled Wide Foot aside, and dashed out of the lodge.
She saw her lover seated on a horse, to which he was tied, with a
band of howling redskins round him, composed, in large part, of
frantic women and children.
But for a guard of warriors the angry squaws would have pulled
Clayton from the horse and hacked him to pieces with knives.
Lena Forest tried to reach Bruce, hardly knowing what she did; for
this sudden discovery that he was not really dead, but that he,
too, was a Blackfoot prisoner, nerved her to the highest pitch of
excitement and recklessness. She had no thought of what she would
do, or could do, if she gained his side; but was only possessed by
an insane desire to get to him, and die with him, if she could do
nothing else.
Wide Foot took savage delight in seizing her and dragging her by the
hair back into the lodge. But the despondent girl had come to the
knowledge that her lover was alive, when she had thought him dead,
and the cruelty and abuse of the frenzied old woman made little
impression on her now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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