Lena Forest listened to the thumping of the drums in the council lodge, and to the fervid oratory of the warriors after nightfall. She knew that things of importance were being discussed in that big lodge, yet she could tell nothing of what was being said, even though much of the talk reached her ears, for she knew not a word of the language. Held close now under the eyes of the old squaw, the girl crouched in the half-lighted prison lodge, listening to this commotion.
Dogs barked, and papooses and squaws talked in the midst of the lodges. Warriors hurried to and fro, and Lena believed that scouts and spies were passing in and out of the village.
All of this made her think that perhaps white men were near, whom the Indians feared; and she thought of Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill, for whose coming she now prayed.
But when at length Buffalo Bill came she had no thought that he was a white man.
The daring scout had made his entrance into the village in the most natural way, riding into it on the back of an Indian pony, arrayed in a medicine robe and blanket, painted until his features were concealed, and with his mustache and imperial hidden beneath the folds of the blanket which he kept muffled up around his chin.
Only the upper part of his face, wonderfully striped with paint, his feathered hair, and his eyes could be seen.
He announced his presence, before entering, by a series of wild yells, and a rattle of his medicine drum; and when the Blackfeet swarmed forth to meet him, he told them briefly, and in well-chosen Blackfoot words, that he was the medicine man who had been asked to come to conjure away the demons that were making the Blackfeet fall ill and die.
Peril of the most deadly sort confronted him instantly, for Crazy Snake stepped forth, and, looking keenly at him, said:
“This is not Wandering Bear, the great medicine man of the Blackfeet of the Sunken Lands?”
But Buffalo Bill was ready even for that.