Quick as a flash, Weeko turned again to her babies, but Nakpa had already disappeared!
Then, maddened by fright and the loss of her children, Weeko became forgetful of her sex and tenderness, for she sternly grasped her husband’s bow in her left hand to do battle.
That charge of the Crows was a disastrous one, but the Sioux were equally brave and desperate. Charges and counter-charges were made, and the slain were many on both sides. The fight lasted until darkness came. Then the Crows departed and the Sioux buried their dead.
When the Crows made their flank charge, Nakpa apparently appreciated the situation. To save herself and the babies, she took a desperate chance. She fled straight through the attacking force.
When the warriors came howling upon her in great numbers, she at once started back the way she had come, to the camp left behind. They had traveled nearly three days. To be sure, they did not travel more than fifteen miles a day, but it was full forty miles to cover before dark.
“Look! look!” exclaimed a warrior, “two babies hung from the saddle of a mule!”
No one heeded this man’s call, and his arrow did not touch Nakpa or either of the boys, but it struck the thick part of the saddle over the mule’s back.
“Lasso her! lasso her!” he yelled once more; but Nakpa was too cunning for them. She dodged in and out with active heels, and they could not afford to waste many arrows on a mule at that stage of the fight. Down the ravine, then over the expanse of prairie dotted with gray-green sage-brush, she sped with her unconscious burden.
“Whoo! whoo!” yelled another Crow to his comrades, “the Sioux have dispatched a runner to get reinforcements! There he goes, down on the flat! Now he has almost reached the river bottom!”
It was only Nakpa. She laid back her cars and stretched out more and more to gain the river, for she realized that when she had crossed the ford the Crows would not pursue her farther.