"Which way?" said he.
"That way," replied the Indian, pointing straight over the prairie.
It occurred to Guy to ask Winged Arrow what he and his friend were going to do when it became known among the Sioux that one of their captives had slipped through their hands, but before he could form the question he was standing there alone. The Indians had vanished in the darkness.
To jump upon his horse and start him in the direction he had been told to go was done in less time than we have taken to tell it. Have you ever seen the prairie? If so you can have some idea of what Guy had to go through. It was the same thing over and over again. Every little hill he mounted when daylight came revealed nothing but a lonely waste with not a living thing in sight. And so it was during the whole of that day until the light faded away and darkness began to settle down on the plain. Then Guy thought he saw a horseman on a distant swell. He stopped and looked at him, but the horseman, if such it were, did not move.
"Is it a Sioux or a white man?" said Guy to himself. "I can't be worse off than I am now, and so I will go and see who it is."
For the first time he put his horse in a lope, keeping his eye on the object and waiting to see what he was going to do. At length another object appeared by the side of the first, and something that hung down by his horse attracted the attention of Guy, and led him to swing his blanket around his head. It was a cavalry saber, and showed Guy that he was among friends.
We cannot stop to tell how Guy Preston was received by the men who had long ago made up their minds that they had seen the last of him. The expedition had stopped to bury their dead and had just gone into camp. Guy said that the two prisoners who were captured at the same time he was were in the hands of the Sioux yet, and he could not tell what was to become of them, and neither did he know what would be done with Winged Arrow and his friend for assisting one captive to escape. When he reached the Fort, Colonel Carrington listened in surprise to the story of his release, and declared his belief that there was something in Winged Arrow's medicine after all. He moved back to Nebraska in the early spring, after Fort Phil Kearney had been demolished. His superiors blamed him for Colonel Fetterman's defeat. They did him an injustice, for it was Red Cloud's ability and strength that won the day.
THE END
