Do you think she is in?
Are you sure she is in?”
As Agodaguada listened, he became thoughtful. He rolled up his line and started back through the forest toward the lodge. As he came near his home he quickened his steps. He noticed that the small trees and underbrush had been trampled down as though a great herd had passed that way. Presently he began to run, and he was still running when he broke into the open where his lodge had stood. But the lodge was there no longer. Instead, he saw only the ruins that the buffaloes had left behind them. Iola was gone.
Agodaguada did not at once follow the enemy, however. He ran to the ruins and began tearing the logs aside and burrowing under them. Presently he gave a cry of joy and drew out from beneath them an old worn pouch of deerskin. From this pouch he took a pair of moccasins and put them on his feet. They were magic moccasins and were Agodaguada’s greatest treasure. And now he was ready to follow Iola and save her from the buffaloes.
It was not hard to trace the way they had gone. The herd had left a broad track of broken trees and branches through the dark forest.
The magic moccasins leaped a hundred yards at each step. They carried Agodaguada along faster than a bird can fly. The buffaloes had gone at full speed, and had had the start of him by several hours, but so swiftly he went that by twilight he found himself close to their camp.
Here he slipped the moccasins from his feet. As silently as a snake he crawled past the other wigwams toward the lodge of the king.
As he came near it he heard the sound of a flute, and soon he was close enough to look inside and see who was playing. It was the king himself. He had taken his human form and was playing upon his flute a love song to Iola, but as a man he was even more hideous than he was as a buffalo.
Iola sat with her back turned toward him. She looked very sad. Her head was sunk on her breast, and she took no notice of his love song or of his languishing glances.
Suddenly Iola started. From the thicket outside had sounded the whistle of a partridge. It was the whistle her father always gave as he came near home after a day of hunting. The buffalo, playing on his flute, had heard nothing.