He had seen many things which led him to know that Boyd Bennett was as two-faced with his Indian friends as he had been with the whites. This murder was not the first the medicine chief had done.
“Well, I’ll never get them down finer than I have them now,” he was saying thoughtfully. “I wish I had Texas here to send back word to Captain Keyes. A knowledge of the exact situation of the village and just how many warriors old Oak Heart has might be of inestimable value later—if I don’t get away again!”
The great scout intended to go into the village and boldly face the renegade. He had hoped by lingering about the place in secret to catch the medicine chief unawares, and so put him out of the way before delivering himself to the tribe. For it was Boyd Bennett alone whom the scout feared. He had a secret possession which he believed might save him from death at the hands of the Sioux, providing Bennett was not there to use his influence as medicine chief against him.
As he came to this final desperate decision, however, Buffalo Bill saw the renegade come into view among the rocks, and in his arms he carried the struggling figure of the White Antelope. Catching sight of the scout, the girl shrieked in English:
“Long Hair! Save me! save me!”
The renegade turned his bloodshot eyes upon the scout. He shrieked with ungovernable fury at him and gibbered:
“Raise your hand, Buffalo Bill, and I will kill her!”
Buffalo Bill raised his rifle and sighted pointblank at his old foe. But the scoundrel held the girl before his own body, besides threatening her with his upraised knife. At another time—or given another person than the White Antelope—the scout would have risked one of his wonderful shots and perhaps brought the bandit chief down before he could have done his captive harm. He hesitated, however, for he had great reason for desiring to save the girl’s life. The fluctuation of a hair’s breadth in his aim might put the rifle-ball into her body instead of Boyd Bennett’s.
Therefore the scout, with a groan, dropped his gun. The girl shrieked again, and in a moment Bennett leaped behind a boulder and fled along a secret path, entirely hidden from the scout’s station.
Buffalo Bill heard the girl’s heartrending shrieks as she was carried swiftly into the hills. They appealed to him strongly, and, quickly girding himself for the chase, he followed on the trail of the abductor.