THE PRISONER.
Lena Forest had hardly entered the cabin and stepped toward the bed,
where, in obedience to the words of Buffalo Bill, she expected to
lie down a while, when a footstep sounded softly behind her, and a
blanket fell over her head.
Startled and alarmed beyond measure, she yet would have cried out,
but that the blanket was drawn tightly about her mouth, and on top
of the blanket a heavy hand pressed back the words she would have
uttered. She struggled frantically, but uselessly; for she was caught
up in arms too strong for her to resist, and was carried quietly out
of the room.
Lena soon knew she was out of the cabin, for the feet of her captor
no longer thudded dully on the wooden floor, but descended, as if
down steps, and sank in soft grass now without a sound.
Then she began to struggle again, trying desperately to throw off the
enveloping and smothering blanket, and making so gallant a fight for
her liberty that she tore a feather from the redskin’s head. That
feather told her that he was an Indian, which was a thing she had
already guessed and feared.
She tried in vain to scream for help when this awful fear that she
was held by an Indian became certain knowledge; but again that heavy
hand kept her from making more than a few inarticulate sounds; and
she was being borne on, she knew not where.
She became unconscious soon, a result largely of the choking and
smothering blanket, and for a time thereafter she had no knowledge of
anything.
When she was put down at last, arousing at the same time, she
succeeded in whisking aside the blanket. Then she saw before her a
large Indian, almost naked, smeared with paint, who was drawing a
canoe from beneath the bank, and getting it ready, apparently, for a
journey on the river that flowed before her.
She recognized the river as the cañon stream that rolled by her home,
and she recognized this spot as one she had seen many a time, a mile
below the cabin, at a point where the walls of the cañon began to
contract on the grassy valley, in readiness for further narrowing
farther down.
The Indian saw that she had recovered consciousness, and he swung
around, lifting his hatchet menacingly.
“White girl no make noise!” he warned, speaking fair English.
The desire to cry out was frozen in her heart, which was filled with
a strange terror of this painted redskin. She stared at him, as the
bird is said to stare at the snake in whose power it has fallen.
The savage adjusted the light canoe in the water, stopping in his
work now and then to listen, as if he anticipated pursuit.
“White girl go with Crazy Snake!” he commanded, again producing the
fear-impelling hatchet, whose bright blade glanced the sunlight like
burnished silver. To her imagination that hatchet edge was red with
the blood of her murdered father.
She tried now to spring up, and to run; and she tried to cry out.
But Crazy Snake, with a single bound, caught her by the hair, and
threw her to the ground. He flashed forth a knife, now, and thrust it
before her terrified eyes.
“Injun kill!” he gurgled, in a way to make her blood run cold. “White
girl want Blackfoot kill?”
“Yes, kill me!” she said, in sudden desperation. “Nothing better
could happen to me now.”
However, he did not put his threat into execution, for he had simply
been trying to frighten her. He lifted her in his bare, painted arms,
and deposited her in the canoe, she being too helpless from fear
and weakness to do anything to prevent this. Then he stepped into
the canoe himself, pushed it off from shore, and, seating himself
deliberately, he took up the paddle and sent the light boat skimming
downstream.
The current began to race faster here, and this, with the strokes of
the paddle, hurled the canoe on at dizzying speed. Yet this speed was
as nothing compared with that which the canoe made later on, when it
was caught in the torrent that rushed in wild cataracts through the
pinched-in space of the narrowed cañon, where the black walls came
close together, and towered to a great height overhead.
Crazy Snake was skillful with the paddle. The girl’s eyes were fixed
on the water ahead, and though more than once it seemed to her that
the frail craft must surely be split on some rock, with a deft turn
he guided it past the danger point, and on down the wild and tumbling
stream.
Lena Forest tried to think with something of sanity of her condition,
and failed utterly. Horror still held her, and she came from under
its spell but slowly.
When the rapids had been passed safely, Crazy Snake began to talk.
“Brown Eyes know why the great Blackfoot chief, Crazy Snake, do
this?” he said, naming her thus from the color of her eyes.
She stared at him, as if she did not comprehend his meaning, but
really because she was still too terrified to answer him.
“Blackfeet kill man that dig for the yellow earth,” he explained.
“The yellow earth makes the white man crazy, and he steals the land
of the Indians that he may dig it. So we kill him.”
She knew that he meant her father.
“White men hunting for the yellow earth threw a bad spell on the
Blackfeet. The evil spirits were made mad, and killed the Blackfeet.
They died. The son of Crazy Snake died. For that we kill the white
men.”
She was sitting in the bow of the canoe, facing him, and he stared
at her with his shining black eyes, that looked so like the eyes of
a snake. She did not wonder that he was called, or called himself,
Crazy Snake; for those snaky eyes, to her heated imagination, seemed
like the eyes of some deadly serpent. They almost fascinated her.
“But--but why do you--take me?” she gasped at last.
Crazy Snake gave utterance to what seemed almost a chuckle.
“Brown Eyes purty squaw!” he said. “Wide Foot, the squaw of Crazy
Snake, is old; he take a young squaw, who is white. The white men
will be killed. But the Brown Eyes she will live.”
The statement roused her as nothing had done since the death of her
father.
“I would rather die!” she said. “I will kill myself rather than
become your--your wife!”
She half rose, and in another second would have leaped into the
stream; but he stretched out his long right arm with a quick motion,
catching her by her hair, which had come unbound in her struggles
with him, and jerked her flat in the bottom of the canoe.
“Ugh!” he grunted. “Brown Eyes fool! Brown Eyes drown herself? No,
no! Brown Eyes be the squaw of Crazy Snake.”
She lay there, in the bottom of the canoe, cowering.
He put the paddle into the canoe, and then lifted her to a seat,
where she sat weakly, regarding him with looks of terror and loathing.
Then he tried to make her see that he was doing her a great favor;
for he declared again that while all the white men were to be killed,
she was to be permitted to live, and would become the squaw of a
great chief.
She failed to see the beauty of the picture he tried to draw. She
preferred death to that.
A little farther down the stream Crazy Snake ran the canoe ashore,
where he tied it, after sinking it.
She had been compelled to get out, and sat on the bank watching him
sink and conceal the boat.
“Brown Eyes go on!” he said, coming up to her.
It seemed that her terror could go no further; but apparently it did,
when from the bushes just ahead there appeared now another Indian.
Crazy Snake showed surprise, thus evidencing that the appearance of
this Indian was unexpected even by him.
The Indian was a Blackfoot, and was a young man, whose head displayed
the feathers of a chief. For an Indian, he was decidedly handsome;
yet the liberal application of paint and grease to his body made him
a disgusting sight to the girl prisoner.
His black eyes opened in wide admiration, as he looked upon her.
“Lightfoot is a long way from the village?” said the chief, speaking
to the younger Indian, who was none other than the warrior whom the
two scouts had observed.
“He was with the party that followed the old trapper,” said
Lightfoot. “We lost his trail and could not find it again.”
“If the young men wish to find the old whitehead, they can do it by
going up the river.”
Crazy Snake waved his hand in the direction whence he had come. He
led the way under the cover of the trees, and then turned to the
young Indian, who had followed silently behind the prisoner.
At the first word it was plain that Crazy Snake had taken a new line
of thought.
“Can the great chief trust his son?” he said, speaking in the
hyperbole characteristic of the red men, for Lightfoot was not
related to him.
Lightfoot folded his arms upon his paint-smeared bosom and looked
Crazy Snake full in the eye.
“The son of the great chief, Crazy Snake, has but to hear and obey,”
he said. “Let the chief speak. Lightfoot is but a child, and will
learn wisdom of the great chief.”
They spoke in Blackfoot, of which the prisoner did not understand a
word.
She felt so weak and trembling that she was almost on the point of
sinking to the ground. She lifted her eyes to heaven, as if praying,
and uttered a name, the name of one who, she was sure, would follow
to the ends of the earth, to rescue or avenge her, if he but knew.
And she uttered, also, the name of Buffalo Bill.
Crazy Snake stopped the words that were on his tongue and gazed at
her in a questioning way.
“What does the Brown Eyes say?” he asked.
“Nothing!” she gasped. “Nothing!”
She shook with terror.
Crazy Snake turned again to Lightfoot.
“The young chief is wise,” he said. “Crazy Snake is the great war
chief of the Blackfeet. His red arrow burns on the breasts of many
white men already, and its bloody fire shall strike fear everywhere.
The father of Brown Eyes wears it, and his scalp is now in the belt
of Running Deer. But the girl is to be kept in the Blackfoot village.
Crazy Snake has work to do, for the white men will gather to avenge
the death of the men who wear the crimson arrow.”
Lightfoot stood with folded arms, listening.
“White men, one of them Long Hair, are now pursuing Crazy Snake. So
Crazy Snake wishes to turn back; and he wishes to gather warriors,
many warriors, to oppose the white men. He would strike the cunning
white men down when they follow--strike down the thieves that steal
the lands of the Blackfeet that they may dig in it for the yellow
earth.”
“The son of the great chief hears,” said Lightfoot, when the older
chief paused.
“The great chief will trust Lightfoot to take the white prisoner,
Brown Eyes, on to the Blackfoot village, where she is to be held
until the coming of Crazy Snake. Does my son hear with open ears?”
“Lightfoot hears what the great chief says.”
The young Indian looked at the girl, who still stood trembling before
them. A sudden admiration of her beauty shone in his black eyes, but
it was not observed either by the chief or the girl.
“Lightfoot hears, and will obey,” he repeated.
Crazy Snake returned to the canoe, and seemed to consider raising
it and resuming the voyage down the river. But he changed his mind,
apparently, and, turning from the river, he hastened away, and was
soon lost to view.
Lightfoot stood looking at the girl who had been placed in his
charge.
“Come!” he said finally. “We go to the village.”
She was listening to the retreating footsteps of the older chief.
“No, I will not go with you!” she declared.
Admiration showed in his eyes. But he was an Indian, and accustomed
to having women obey. He caught her by the wrist and jerked her along.
“Come!” he said. “Brown Eyes is very beautiful. It is too bad that
she is to enter the lodge of Crazy Snake, who has a wife already.” He
was speaking to himself, for his words were Blackfoot, and she did
not understand them. “Brown Eyes is too beautiful to be the squaw
of Crazy Snake. She should mate with a younger warrior. Is it meet
that winter should marry summer? Brown Eyes is young, and she is
beautiful.”
He stopped and stood facing her, feasting his eyes on her beauty.
There was something in his look that terrified her. She tried to
break away from him, but again he caught her by the wrist and pulled
her along when she resisted.
“Come!” he said, and this time he spoke in English. “We go fast.
Blackfoot town long, long way. Crazy Snake say we go fast.”