CHAPTER XIX
HOW JOE CAME HOME
When Nina saw Joe fall and heard him slide down the bank and into the water she thought he was dead.
When she could see nothing of him, and heard the Indians rushing through the trees and grass above her she fled like a startled rabbit through the undergrowth.
She saw an Indian dash down the bank and look up and down the creek, then she heard his footsteps recede and words called out in a language she did not understand. Twice while she hid and cowered in the undergrowth she saw Indians come down to the creek and look along its banks, then she heard them ride away.
Many times in her flight she stopped and listened. It was pitch-dark in the thicket, and the little girl, creeping forward through the underbrush, was half-crazed with fear. But she knew that her best protection from capture by the savages was in the tangled brush, and she fought her way gallantly through it, and just at dawn found herself at the edge of the thicket, with the broad, open prairies before her.
Remembering Joe's directions she gave the whistle he had always used in calling Kit, and to her unbounded joy heard a low, smothered whinny in answer.
In her terror and loneliness it sounded to the little Princess like the voice of an old friend. Guiding her direction by the sound she stole along in the shadow of the thicket and not long after came to where Kit, still tied as Joe had left her, turned her slender head and intelligent eyes toward her, pawing the ground with an impatient hoof.
Nina had never ridden horseback, but she was too terrified, too weary now to remember that. Clasping her arms about Kit's neck she managed to scramble on her back and started off, not knowing which way to go, but eager to put distance in any direction between herself and the horrors with which she had been surrounded.
She had to cling tight to Kit's mane to keep from falling off, and was afraid to let her go much faster than a walk, so that her progress was slow and difficult. Sunrise found her plodding on, a forlorn little figure on a big bay mare, tears running down her face, and muffled sobs shaking her.