The Phantom Rider; or The Giant Chief's Fate: A tale of the old Dahcotah country

A Tale of the Old Dahcotah Country.
BY MARO O. ROLFE, Author of Pocket Novel No. 47, “The Man Hunter.”
NEW YORK. BEADLE AND ADAMS, PUBLISHERS, 98 WILLIAM STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by FRANK STARR & CO., In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
The scene of our story is laid in the great North-west.
It was a bleak, windy day in November. The shrill blasts wailed through the forest trees like the last despairing cry of a lost spirit, and gust after gust beat and roared around the little log cabin standing so silent and lonely, half buried in the midst of the Titanic oaks that spread their long branches protectingly over its low roof, and whose sturdy trunks environed it, seeming to keep silent and untiring guard over its four rough walls.
The scene within the cabin was in striking contrast with the wild aspect without.
It was a rude but homelike place, and despite the chinked walls and rough furniture, there was such an air of plain comfort as one might expect to see in the abode of the sturdy western pioneer.
A young girl sat by a table engaged in embroidering a broad strip of dressed deer-skin with fancifully colored beads and quills—a blue-eyed, slender-looking little woman with shining masses of golden-brown hair falling unconfined about her small, shapely head, and down over her shoulders until it reached the waist of her dress, which fitted her willowy form to perfection, and whose ample folds half concealed, half disclosed a small, neatly-clad foot and well-turned ankle.
Her sunny blue eyes held a soft, loving light, and a bright smile played continually upon her dainty face and around her rosy little mouth, with its ripe lips half parted from the rows of small white teeth.
But the azure eyes could flash with courage and determination, and the pretty mouth could be hard and stern with its strawberry lips tightly drawn and its tiny, gleaming teeth hard-set.