A Prairie-Schooner Princess

by Mary K. Maule

"To the Minne-to-wauk-pala. He say heap much antelope, elk, buffalo out that way."

The eyes which had given the young Indian his name blazed hotly. In an instant he saw the plan. He knew as well as if he had heard the details that the drunken degenerate white man was planning to take these young men on a hunting expedition, and when they were crazed with fire-water lead them on a raid on the Peniman homestead, for which, if trouble arose, they would be blamed, and he would escape free, and yet would be enabled to work out his fiendish designs upon the family.

Without a moment's hesitation he resolved to join the hunt.

Long before the sun rose the next morning the young Indians were on their way. Red Snake, attired in his usual fashion, with his face stained red and great warlike emblems of red and blue and yellow painted on his face and breast, led the way.

He was not intoxicated this day, Eagle Eye observed with some interest, and the fire-water was kept carefully secreted until they made their night camp, when a demijohn was passed around and around among them until the Indians were all wild or stupid. He drank nothing. Eagle Eye, while making a great pretense of roisterous drinking, took little, but pretending to be stupefied lay down beside the fire with his blanket over his head and watched and listened until all was still.

The camp had sunk to silence, the whoops and yelps of the drunken Indians had gradually sunk to grunts and snores, when Eagle Eye saw Red Snake creep from his blanket and signal to Black Bear, a wild young buck who had already been in considerable trouble, and draw him away from the camp.

Eagle Eye lay still for a few moments, then rolling over and grunting, as if in a bad dream, edged himself away from the firelight until he reached the shadows beyond, then on hands and knees crept noiselessly through the grass until he was within earshot of Red Snake and Black Bear. They were talking in low, guttural tones, fortunately in the Sioux dialect.

After a jumble of talk, of which he could make nothing, he heard at last the thing for which he had been waiting; Red Snake and Black Bear were planning a raid upon the Peniman homestead, and to Black Bear was confided the details of leading the raid, while Red Snake himself would be free to carry out whatever nefarious designs on the persons or property of the settlers he might have in mind without danger of detection.

Eagle Eye's blood boiled hotly. Not only was his indignation aroused against the renegade by the feeling of gratitude for the white family who had nursed and tended him, but because of his loyalty and devotion to his own people.

He had been one of those who had been betrayed into making the assault upon the Peniman place before, and his life had nearly paid the penalty of his folly. Then, as now, the young Indians had known nothing of his plans, but maddened with fire-water, incited by wild tales of loot and treasure, they had followed him, ignorant of the fact that they were being made the cat's-paw to cover his crimes, and that should detection and punishment follow it was the Sioux who would be blamed and punished by the white man's law, while the white man who was responsible for it would escape, his villainy covered by the blanket and war-paint of an Indian.