She learned that the danger was really alarming, and that two noted scouts had been sent for, and had arrived—Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill. Her father knew these scouts, and Buffalo Bill was his personal friend. She tried to see them, but found only Pawnee Bill, Cody having departed for the hills.
Pawnee Bill advised her that it was foolish for her and her father to remain in their exposed home at that time, and assured her he would call on her father and tell him so.
The girl returned home, determined more than ever to induce her father to go at once to the town, or to some point of greater security.
When she rode along the path, approaching her home in the gathering twilight, she saw before the door a form lying in a limp heap, a sight that stilled her heartbeats and caused her to reel in her saddle with faintness. Nevertheless, she rode up to it, and, leaping down by it, discovered her father, dead. He had been killed and scalped; and on his breast, where the blue flannel shirt had been torn open, was that dreadful sight, the arrow of blood drawn with a scalping knife.
The girl swooned at sight of it, and fell as if dead beside the dead body.
How long she remained there unconscious she did not know. The stars were in the sky and the wind from the mountain was cold when she aroused and came back to a realization of the terrible thing that had befallen her father and herself.
She threw herself on the inanimate form, and wept as if her eyes were oceans. By and by she struggled to her feet.
Her first thought was of flight, for personal safety, and for help for her father, whose body needed to be protected from wolves and other wild beasts. But she discovered that she had not strength to go anywhere; and this, with thoughts of what might happen during her absence, held her to the dreadful spot.
She crept at length to the cabin, where she procured a candle. With it she returned to her father’s body. Lighting the candle, she put it upright on the ground beside him, knowing that wolves and other wild animals fear such a light. Having done that, she returned to the cabin, this time thinking of finding her horse, which had strayed away, and of riding to the town with the news.
But she swooned again as she crossed the threshold, and fell to the floor, where she lay a long while. This time when she recovered she crawled to the bed, and laid herself down on it. She slept, then; though how or why she did was afterward a puzzle to her.