Dave and Abe had listened intently to the tale.
“Stranger, I believe you said the red devils were Crows?”
“Yes,” answered the trapper.
“What chief mought be at the head on ’em? Do you know?” asked Abe.
“Yes; Dick Sawyer, my partner, recognized one of the chiefs, an’ he seemed to be the head one of the party. He said it was the ‘White Vulture,’” said the trapper.
“You don’t say so!” and the “Crow-Killer” indulged in a low whistle of astonishment. “Why, he’s the biggest fighting man in all the Crow nation. They do say he’s a perfect ‘painter’ on the war-trail. I never see’d him yet, but I’d like to!” and there was a strange tone in the old hunter’s voice, and a strange glitter in his eyes, as he uttered the words. His fingers, too, clenched tighter around the long barrel of his rifle, and there was an expression upon his face which boded danger to the Crow chief.
“I didn’t see much of him,” said the stranger, “’cos I were in pretty considerable hurry to git for the open country, but he’s a heap on fight, I should say for he cleaned us out in about twenty minutes, an’ we made a tough old fight of it, too.”
“Do you think any the rest of your friends escaped?” asked the captain in command of the fort, who had been an attentive listener to the trapper’s story.
“Wal, I don’t exactly know,” said the trapper, scratching his head thoughtfully. “I guess my partner, Dick Sawyer, would get shet of them, if any in the party would, ’cos he had a powerful running hoss—an animal that was jist chain-lightning on the go. It were a hoss from the south. Dick give a couple of hundred for him, an’ that’s a fancy price, you know; but he were awful fast, an’ jist as handsome a critter as I ever laid eyes on. An’ I kinder think that if any of the party got away ’sides me, it were likely to be Dick an’ his white hoss.”
“A white horse?” asked Dave, a sudden suspicion coming into his mind.