“An’ what is that?” asked the “Crow-Killer.”
“How he escaped after you clinched with him?”
The old hunter paused for a moment before he answered but after a little while, he spoke:
“Wal, he said something that staggered me. I let up on the grip an’ then he slipped through my fingers jus’ like an eel.”
“What did he say?” asked Dave.
“Not much; only that he was the son of ‘Little Star,’” replied Abe, a peculiar expression appearing upon his features.
“And ‘Little Star’ was the Crow girl that you married!” cried Dave in astonishment.
“Jus’ so. If you remember, I told you I had a kind of a sort of a feelin’ that it was ag’in’ my nature to hurt the ‘White Vulture,’ although he belonged to the tribe, not a red sucker of whom I ever spared when I got within rifle-range of ’em.”
“Then the ‘Little Star’ must have been carried to the Crow nation and married to one of their chiefs,” said Dave.
“That air likely; but a Crow warrior that I met onc’t at Fort Benton on a peace talk, a brother of the ‘Rolling Cloud’—that’s the father of the ‘White Vulture,’ that I killed—walked up to me an’ asked if I were the ‘Crow-Killer.’ Wal, I expected a tussle thar an’ then, but he only looked at me, an’ said in the Crow language: “The ‘Crow-Killer’ is a great chief; he is as strong as the white bear; he killed the ‘Rolling Cloud,’ but the Crow chief has a son, the ‘White Vulture,’ an’ he will take the scalp of the ‘Crow-Killer’; it will dry in the smoke of his lodge, an’ the Crow nation will be glad. The ‘Crow-Killer’ is a great brave, but when he is tied to the torture-stake, the Crows will speak words in his ear that will make him howl like a dog—words that will burn like fire;” then the chief walked away. Now, I’ve puzzled considerably to know what those words air. I s’pose it’s something ’bout my Injun wife, the ‘Little Star,’ but I hadn’t any idea then that the ‘White Vulture’ was her son, an’ it kinder considerably started me when I hearn he was. I’ve a sort of suspicion now what them words air a-goin’ to be, that’s goin’ to make me squeal. But then ag’in, thar’s another thing that gits me: I never hearn of this chief—this ‘White Vulture’—having any brother, but still t’other one mought have died. Anyway, one of these days I shall find out all about it.”