The Indian girl nodded.
“Why should Pa-e-has-ka return?”
“He is the captive of the medicine chief, Death Killer, now; but White Antelope lets him go free that the paleface braves lie not unburied, and that the other white warriors take heed not to follow upon the trail of the Sioux. Will Pa-e-has-ka promise?”
Buffalo Bill was silent for a moment. If he refused he knew that her protection would cease. If he agreed to her condition he must keep his word, be the end what it might. And that end looked to the scout much like an ironwood stake, a hot fire, and a bunch of naked red devils dancing a two-step about him while he slowly crisped to a cinder!
There was a loophole. He made a mental reservation that, after bearing the tidings of the massacre to the fort, and delivering Oak Heart’s warning, he would return to the Sioux encampment—but with a force behind him that would surprise the redskins!
“I agree,” he said finally.
“Trust not the fox-tongue of the Long Hair!” cried Boyd Bennett violently. “He will not keep his pledge.”
“The paleface is the foe of my people, but his tongue is straight,” declared the Indian maiden, with confidence.
Buffalo Bill began secretly to weaken on that “mental reservation.”
“But he will come with a force at his back and burn the Indian village,” cried the renegade.