“What got?” said Red Wing, peering at the girl, who shrank from him.
“This is my sister, Red Wing. We were on our way to the home of a friend who lives out here. You’ll let us go on?”
The other Cheyennes began to murmur.
Their restive, prancing ponies, the guttural talk, and exclamations, the fluttering of their feathers, combined in the darkness to give to the girl such feelings of terror that she could hardly keep from again screaming outright.
“The Wolf Soldier speaks with a straight tongue?” questioned Red Wing.
The other Cheyennes set up a clamor, fearing the prisoners were to be released. These were the first white people they had encountered in their efforts at raiding, and they did not want them to slip through their fingers now.
“I speak with a straight tongue, Red Wing,” Barlow protested. “She is my sister, and we are going to visit a friend.”
But they were not to be permitted to go on.
“Wolf Soldier stay with me, and she stay with me,” was the announcement, whereupon the Cheyennes closed in about their prisoners.
But because the Wolf Soldier was known to Red Wing, the prisoners were not tied, nor were they treated to any savage brutality, as would otherwise have been the case.