“Why, how did it happen?” said he, knowing that he must say something.
“You know as much about it as I do,” returned the squawman. “Now the next thing is——”
He turned and spoke some words to the Indian women; but Carl, although he had been on the plains all his life, could not understand him. He hated an Indian as he hated nothing else on earth, and he had not taken the pains that some people do to acquire a knowledge of their language. But the Indian women understood him, and straightway set up a howl as if they had lost some of their friends. One would think they were professional criers who had been hired to shed abundant tears over Sitting Bull’s untimely death.
“Can’t you keep still for a minute?” shouted the squawman, shaking both his fists at the women, and forgetting in his excitement that he had been addressing them in their own language. “You two stay here and watch this prisoner while I go down and see how it all came about. You had better keep your eyes on him, for the Indians may come up and call for him at any moment.”
The squawman plunged through the door and went out, but he left three excited women behind him. They wanted to learn the full particulars of the murder of Sitting Bull the same as the squawman did, but for a time they kept their places on the bed, comparing notes with each other and howling alternately. Finally one arose to her feet and slipped through the door, and she had been gone but a little while before another went out.
“I tell you the time is coming for me to make a strike for freedom,” soliloquized Carl, drawing his feet under him so that he could go out of the other side of the tepee if this one should follow the example of her comrades. “If I once get out of this tepee, I bet they will never see me again.”
Carl did not know much about women, but he naturally judged of what he would have done himself if he were left with a task on his hands in which he was not particularly interested. He would not have sat there alone in suspense while all the rest of the camp, men, women and children, were out to hear the report of the scout and get all the news. She sat uneasily on her bed, but finally got up and went to the door. As she did so a long, mournful howl, followed by a chorus of yells which denoted that some of the tribe were growing excited, came to her ears, and that was more than she could stand. In an instant she opened the door and went out.
Almost any one who was placed in Carl Preston’s situation would have been thrown off his balance by this unlooked-for incident, coming as it did on the heels of his disappointment in regard to the Ghost Dance, but it had no effect upon the scout. His face never changed its color, and his hands never trembled a particle. Quietly he arose to his feet and approached the door. It was dark outside, and he could not see a single thing. The yells had ceased now, and the braves were listening to a speech from somebody.
“Now is my chance, if ever,” said Carl, going back to the squawman’s bed and hastily tumbling the buffalo robes and blankets aside. “If I stay here I will surely be staked out, and I believe I would rather die at once.”
Carl speedily found the Winchester of which he was in search, together with a murderous-looking knife, which he proceeded to buckle around his waist. Then he caught up the rifle, drew his knife, and with two quick steps approached the side of the tepee opposite the door. One slit with his knife and he was free; or at least he was free until the Sioux got after him and captured him. With long, noiseless strides he took his way over the hill in front of which the tepee was pitched, and then turned abruptly off to the right and followed a direction exactly contrary to the one in which he wanted to go. Fort Scott lay pretty near south of him, and he argued that when the Sioux came to pursue him, which would be in the course of a few minutes at the very farthest, they would turn in the direction of the fort. When they had given up the pursuit he would turn around and follow his rightful road.