“None of that!” snapped Buffalo Bill in English, which he knew the girl understood quite well. “Make a false move at your peril—and at your father’s!”
“My father——” began the startled maiden gaspingly.
“Ride closer. Keep beside me, Oak Heart! I forbid you speaking to your child!”
Buffalo Bill’s commanding tone was most brutal. His eyes flashed into the Indian maiden’s own as though he meant every word of his recent threat. But the supposed Oak Heart’s shoulders shook. However, he kept his head turned religiously away from his “daughter.”
The seconds were slipping by, and the scouts were approaching very near to the place where they would be obliged to turn sharply and make their dash for the cañon. Despite their bearing off so far toward the left, their course had been apparently toward the Indian lines.
White Antelope, all the rich color receded from her cheeks, rode beside Buffalo Bill on his left hand. She was not only frightened by the scout’s threat, which he seemed to be able to fulfil, but she was puzzled at her father’s inaction and seeming helplessness. She tried to force her pony forward slyly so as to obtain a look at Oak Heart’s features.
“None o’ that!” commanded Buffalo Bill in quite as brutal and threatening a tone as before.
At the moment a wild yell rose from their rear—from the direction of the fort. The girl turned swiftly to look. And so surprised were the scouts to hear a disturbance in that direction, that they glanced around, too.
Out of the gateway appeared a black horse, and on its back a figure in uniform and wide-brimmed hat. But as the horse dashed on the figure snatched off the uniform hat, displaying the long, flying hair of an Indian, and he broke into a shrill and terrible Indian war-whoop!
On the heels of this another roar burst from the fort, and out of the gateway piled a troop of mounted men—those soldiers that were first to get upon their horses to pursue the wily Oak Heart. The latter saw his daughter and knew her danger. Following his war-whoop, he shrieked a warning to White Antelope. She understood the words he uttered, although the scouts could not.