But Buffalo Bill was ready even for that. “I am Whispering Elk, the Blackfoot medicine man from the far North,” he answered. “Wandering Bear has gone to the Blackfeet of the Sagebrush Valley, where there is much sickness, and I come in his stead.” Crazy Snake, shrewd as he was, did not doubt that this was an Indian medicine man; but he had met Wandering Bear, and this man did not resemble him. Buffalo Bill, on his Indian pony, was conducted toward the council lodge. Before it was reached, he was asked to stop at a lodge and cure a warrior stricken with measles. While not believing that he could do anything more, perhaps, than give the stricken warrior hope, the scout descended carefully from the pony and entered the lodge. The Indian braves, the women and children, and even the suspicious sniffing dogs came close at his heels, filling the lodge which he entered. The sick man, his face lighted by the leaping fire of the lodge, which had been stirred into new life, looked appealingly at the supposed medicine man. For a minute, in the midst of a great silence, Buffalo Bill postured before the sick man. Then, with a quick motion, and some shouted words, he stooped and drew from under the skins that covered the sick man the stuffed skin of a weasel, which he had concealed under his robe. This he threw on the ground with a yell, and then beat and tore it into fragments, casting the fragments into the fire, that the Blackfeet might not too closely inspect them. The Blackfeet yelled in hoarse joy and triumph when they beheld what they believed to be the body of the evil spirit, taking the shape of a weasel, that had vexed and sickened the warrior. The warrior’s face glowed and his eyes brightened; and there was a certainty that, believing now he would get well, much of the battle against the disease had been already won by him. As the scout came out of this lodge the girl prisoner, Lena Forest, saw him again; but he was still to her but a medicine man, a horrid and horrible creature, worse even than the hideous Indians who had surrounded her so much of late. She saw him go on toward the council lodge, and heard there the renewed beating of drums, and a repetition of the sounds of Indian oratory. Buffalo Bill, in thus desperately entering the Blackfoot village, hoped to locate the prisoners, and, later in the night, release them. If he was discovered, his own life would be the forfeit, he felt sure. The risk was great, but the thing to be gained was great, for it was no less than the release of old Nomad and the other prisoners, thus saving their lives; for he was certain they would be slain by the Blackfeet, if the latter were forced to retreat by an attack of the range riders.