She saw her lover seated on a horse, to which he was tied, with a band of howling redskins round him, composed, in large part, of frantic women and children.
But for a guard of warriors the angry squaws would have pulled Clayton from the horse and hacked him to pieces with knives.
Lena Forest tried to reach Bruce, hardly knowing what she did; for this sudden discovery that he was not really dead, but that he, too, was a Blackfoot prisoner, nerved her to the highest pitch of excitement and recklessness. She had no thought of what she would do, or could do, if she gained his side; but was only possessed by an insane desire to get to him, and die with him, if she could do nothing else.
Wide Foot took savage delight in seizing her and dragging her by the hair back into the lodge. But the despondent girl had come to the knowledge that her lover was alive, when she had thought him dead, and the cruelty and abuse of the frenzied old woman made little impression on her now.
True, she feared now for Bruce’s life; yet while there is life there is hope, and that he had been spared thus far gave glimmerings of hope for the future.
When the old trapper, Nick Nomad, was brought into the village there was further wild commotion among the Blackfeet, of which the girl prisoner could not fail to have knowledge.
She was sure that Bruce still lived, and was held in some of the lodges.
She saw the trapper on his rawboned horse, as he was conducted past the lodge entrance in a sort of triumphal entry made by Crazy Snake himself; and from the shouts she knew that some big chief had arrived and guessed it was Crazy Snake. Then she saw Crazy Snake, and was sure of this.
Throughout the remaining hours, until darkness came, the girl prisoner tried to think of some means by which she might release herself and the other prisoners.
The wariness of the old squaw had increased since the coming of Crazy Snake. No more did Wide Foot beat and abuse the captive, a thing she feared to do now, lest the vengeance of Crazy Snake should descend on her.