Everybody was up; and more than one commented upon the strangeness of the three horses being brought to the tepee so early.
The warning message which had come from the south, and had been delivered to his chief by the Snake-Who-Leaps, on that dark night some weeks before, was now to be verified. “What the red men have done to the pale-faces, the pale-faces will now do to them. Retaliation and revenge!”
Yet not one was quite prepared for the events which followed. Followed even so swiftly that the women left their porridge cooking in their kettles and their cows half-milked; while the men of the village promptly seized the nearest weapon, and rushed to the hopeless defence.
The rude sound that had startled every dweller in that pretty settlement was the report of a gun. Then came a galloping troop of cavalry—more firing—incessant, indiscriminate!
There was a babel of shrieks as the women and little ones fell where they stood, in the midst of their work or play. There were the blood-curdling war-whoops of the savages, answering the random shots. Above and through all, one cry rang clear to Wahneenah’s consciousness.
“The horses! The horses! Ride—ride—ride—as I have taught you! For your lives—Ride!”
It was but an instant. Wahneenah and her children were amount and afield. But as, in an anguish of fear for his friends, and no thought of himself, once more the Snake-Who-Leaps shouted his warning, the whistle of a death-dealing bullet came to him where he watched, and struck him down across the threshold of Wahneenah’s happy home.