At the close of these, my recollection had come back. I was far to the north of our camping-ground. Noon was waning into evening. The blue sky of the morning was seamed and blurred with rushing cloud. The horse I was mounted on was urged by me, in a headlong chase, after two flying figures. In the commencing shadow of the evening, I was enabled to see that they were Indians.
Did I not recognize one of them?
What if I did do so? Was I not maddened with the long siege I had endured? Was I not wild from my lengthy imprisonment on the mound, and eager upon the work of death? Suddenly, one of their horses stumbled and fell. Its rider was thrown under the body of the fallen animal. With a wild scream of delight, I urged my own steed up to them.
When I did so, the other Indian had dismounted, and was standing between me and the fallen red-skin, in a queenly and defiant posture.
It was a Mahala.
"The white chief has killed the husband of Clo-ke-ta. Let him now, if he wills it, take the life of her father."
Par-a-wau was stretched upon the dry earth, crushed under the motionless body of the animal he had been riding.
For a moment, I gazed upon the two. My brain seemed to whirl in a wild dance, as I did this. Then it was stilled, and, without a word of reply, I leapt from the back of my horse. With some little difficulty I extracted the Cheyenne chief from beneath the dead body of the animal he had been mounted upon. The gallant little beast had been stricken, earlier, by one of our balls. It had passed through its hind quarter. Yet, in spite of the loss of blood and the weakness gradually growing on it from this, it had carried the Cheyenne thus far.
Although bruised severely by the fall, when I raised him, Par-a-wau was able to stand erect.