“Right ye aire, Buffler,” he said. “I’ll raise ther country, and I’ll be follerin’ ye with a company of men ’fore another twenty-four hours rolls over my head.” He stretched forth his hand. “Shake, Buffler; and you, too, Pawnee! You’re startin’ on a dangerous trip, and I knows it. Mebbe we mayn’t meet ag’in ever in this world. But whatever happens, I know you’ll be found doin’ yer duty.”
He struck his horse with the spurs, waking old Nebuchadnezzar into renewed life.
“Good-by!” he said. “Good luck to ye, pards!”
And then he rode away—the wise, simple, and brave old trapper, Nick Nomad.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE PRISONER.
Lena Forest had hardly entered the cabin and stepped toward the bed, where, in obedience to the words of Buffalo Bill, she expected to lie down a while, when a footstep sounded softly behind her, and a blanket fell over her head.
Startled and alarmed beyond measure, she yet would have cried out, but that the blanket was drawn tightly about her mouth, and on top of the blanket a heavy hand pressed back the words she would have uttered. She struggled frantically, but uselessly; for she was caught up in arms too strong for her to resist, and was carried quietly out of the room.
Lena soon knew she was out of the cabin, for the feet of her captor no longer thudded dully on the wooden floor, but descended, as if down steps, and sank in soft grass now without a sound.
Then she began to struggle again, trying desperately to throw off the enveloping and smothering blanket, and making so gallant a fight for her liberty that she tore a feather from the redskin’s head. That feather told her that he was an Indian, which was a thing she had already guessed and feared.
She tried in vain to scream for help when this awful fear that she was held by an Indian became certain knowledge; but again that heavy hand kept her from making more than a few inarticulate sounds; and she was being borne on, she knew not where.