“When day dawned he had not returned to the village, and I began to grow alarmed. After an hour had passed I went to the burying place with six other braves. Red Cloud had disappeared, but two dead Cave Dwellers lay on the ground near his father’s grave.
“There had been a fierce struggle, as the marks on the ground plainly showed; but the Cave Dwellers were more than twenty to one, and at last they had overpowered him and carried him away to one of their caves.
“Following swiftly on their trail, we found this message, which he had managed to write and drop on the path when they were not watching him closely.”
Eagle Eye handed to the border king a fragment of white cloth, evidently torn from the Navaho chief’s shirt, on which was written, in Indian hieroglyphics with the man’s own blood, the following brief but appealing message:
“Tell my brother, Long Hair.”
Buffalo Bill’s heart burned within him with rage against the Cave Dwellers as he read these words, and he registered a mental vow to do all that a man could do to save his blood brother from their clutches.
“We could not catch the Cave Dwellers before they reached their mountains and ascended to their lofty retreats,” said Eagle Eye, continuing his story. “It was hopeless to try to follow them there, for they had many sentries posted on rocky ledges on the hillside. These sentries shook their spears at us and shouted their defiance.
“We would have ascended, but we could find no path by which to climb. Every time we followed one, we found it terminated in a sheer wall of rock or a precipice.