THE COMING OF THE MEDICINE MAN.
Lena Forest’s position in the Blackfoot village could hardly have
been worse, for the malignity of two jealous Indian women was turned
against her in every possible way to make her suffer.
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.
True, she feared now for Bruce’s life; yet while there is life there
is hope, and that he had been spared thus far gave glimmerings of
hope for the future.
When the old trapper, Nick Nomad, was brought into the village there
was further wild commotion among the Blackfeet, of which the girl
prisoner could not fail to have knowledge.
She was sure that Bruce still lived, and was held in some of the
lodges.
She saw the trapper on his rawboned horse, as he was conducted past
the lodge entrance in a sort of triumphal entry made by Crazy Snake
himself; and from the shouts she knew that some big chief had arrived
and guessed it was Crazy Snake. Then she saw Crazy Snake, and was
sure of this.
Throughout the remaining hours, until darkness came, the girl
prisoner tried to think of some means by which she might release
herself and the other prisoners.
The wariness of the old squaw had increased since the coming of Crazy
Snake. No more did Wide Foot beat and abuse the captive, a thing she
feared to do now, lest the vengeance of Crazy Snake should descend on
her.
Lena Forest listened to the thumping of the drums in the council
lodge, and to the fervid oratory of the warriors after nightfall.
She knew that things of importance were being discussed in that
big lodge, yet she could tell nothing of what was being said, even
though much of the talk reached her ears, for she knew not a word of
the language. Held close now under the eyes of the old squaw, the
girl crouched in the half-lighted prison lodge, listening to this
commotion.
Dogs barked, and papooses and squaws talked in the midst of the
lodges. Warriors hurried to and fro, and Lena believed that scouts
and spies were passing in and out of the village.
All of this made her think that perhaps white men were near, whom the
Indians feared; and she thought of Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill, for
whose coming she now prayed.
But when at length Buffalo Bill came she had no thought that he was a
white man.
The daring scout had made his entrance into the village in the most
natural way, riding into it on the back of an Indian pony, arrayed
in a medicine robe and blanket, painted until his features were
concealed, and with his mustache and imperial hidden beneath the
folds of the blanket which he kept muffled up around his chin.
Only the upper part of his face, wonderfully striped with paint, his
feathered hair, and his eyes could be seen.
He announced his presence, before entering, by a series of wild
yells, and a rattle of his medicine drum; and when the Blackfeet
swarmed forth to meet him, he told them briefly, and in well-chosen
Blackfoot words, that he was the medicine man who had been asked to
come to conjure away the demons that were making the Blackfeet fall
ill and die.
Peril of the most deadly sort confronted him instantly, for Crazy
Snake stepped forth, and, looking keenly at him, said:
“This is not Wandering Bear, the great medicine man of the Blackfeet
of the Sunken Lands?”
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.
In the council lodge Buffalo Bill tried to conduct himself like
a true medicine man. He yelled and danced, and besought the good
spirits of the mountains to descend and assist him in driving out
the evil spirits that were vexing the Blackfeet. But he did not dare
talk too much, and much of his eloquence took the shape of pantomime,
in which he used wonderful gestures, always keeping the folds of the
blanket over the lower part of his face--which gave him an additional
air of mystery to the frenzied Indians.
He discovered that one thing the Blackfeet were anxious about was
that he should confer on them some power, by a spell or charm, that
would enable them to resist the bullets of the white men, whom they
feared.
The scout gave them whatever assurances they desired, feeling that he
could not safely do otherwise.
Finally he left the council lodge, declaring that the spirits had
told him that, concealed in some of the lodges, were little demons,
hid under buffalo robes, and even in the earth, who were working much
evil, and he must find and destroy them.
His object, of course, was to pass from lodge to lodge, in order to
locate the prisoners, and if possible communicate to them knowledge
of the thing he was trying to do.
The warriors streamed after him, and behind the warriors came
the women and children, while the barking and sniffing dogs ran
everywhere, yelping and snarling.
It did not take Buffalo Bill long to find out that Nomad and young
Clayton were held together in a lodge near the medicine lodge.
“Now, if I can locate the girl,” he said to himself.
The braves were crowding round him, and he dared not say a word in
English which would let Nomad and Clayton know who he was, and his
disguise and his acting were so good that they did not recognize him.
But he contrived to make himself known to old Nomad by a few words of
Spanish, and he saw the old man stare in confusion and astonishment.
In a little while he found Lena Forest, crouching in the lodge where
she had been held from the first.
At the entrance to this lodge stood old Wide Foot, who fell back when
the terrible medicine man appeared before her.
Lena Forest started up, frightened by the entrance of the medicine
man.
Not daring to use English, the scout said a few words in Spanish,
wondering if she would understand. She uttered a cry of amazement,
for she understood him--a cry which was fairly forced from her by her
wild astonishment.
Buffalo Bill poked and peered, said a few words more to her in
Spanish, the Indians thinking them words of invocation which they
could not be expected to understand, and then he retreated.
As he did so, coming thus out of the lodge, he heard wild yells, and
a rushing of feet. And then before him, bounding along, his eyes
blazing and his whole being wrought to a frenzy, he saw the medicine
man whom he had captured, and whom he was impersonating.
With yells of rage the medicine man rushed upon him, denouncing him,
and screaming to the warriors that this was a white man, and must be
beaten down and captured; that he was the terrible Long Hair himself!
It was like the explosion of a mine of gunpowder. Instantly, a
dozen warriors sprang at Buffalo Bill, tearing the blanket from his
shoulders, and yelling with rage as their enemy stood revealed.