This Indian called to him, asking if he had heard the dog; for the blanket and the headdress made the Indian think the scout was another redskin.
As the scout had heard the words that were spoken before the lodge door and had noted the tones of the voice, he answered, for he understood the Sioux language perfectly, and imitated almost to perfection the voice of an Indian.
“The dog has gone off that way,” he said. “I think he is after a rabbit; I will see!”
Then the scout broke into a run, as if he were hastening after the dog. He knew that now he would have to “cut sticks,” as he would have expressed it; and when he had another lodge between him and the Indian he had spoken to, he ran with all his might, yet as softly as he could.
It was well for Buffalo Bill that he had moved thus promptly. For, as he ran, he heard a wild yell behind him, which told him that the body of the dog had been discovered.
The yell stopped the dancing and the drumbeating as suddenly as if a rifle shot had been fired. The Indians poured pell-mell out of the council house. The yells that now sounded seemed to arouse all the village curs at once; and some of them discovering the hurrying figure of the scout, they rushed at him like a pack of wolves chasing a deer.
But the scout was now on the edge of the village, and before him was the wild-timbered hills. Turning suddenly as the foremost of the dogs pressed him and began to snap at his heels, he cast aside the blanket and the headdress and lifted his revolver.
They were plainly to be seen in the moonlight. Two shots sent the leaders rolling in their death agonies, and so startled the others that they drew back, thus giving Buffalo Bill a clear path again before him.
Then arrows began to sing and rifles to bark as the Indians, guided by the yelping of the dogs, and knowing now that an enemy had invaded the village, began to fire in the direction of the scout’s flight.