“I won’t listen to your chatter!” he asserted in wrath, and walked away.
Though she soon started to follow him, for the purpose of seeing what he did, or what befell him, he walked so rapidly, when once he had left her, that she lost sight of him.
“Well, don’t that git ye?” she mumbled, peering through the undergrowth. “I said, and I’ll say it ag’in, that somethin’s troublin’ that man a good deal more than his breakfast is.”
Buffalo Bill had found some Indian signs which did not please him, and he was hastening back to the camp, with the intention of suggesting a forward movement, when he came upon a sight that astonished him. He saw Latimer walking hurriedly through the timber growth, which here was low and scrubby—walking as if he had an important meeting in view and needed to hasten. Then he saw Latimer stop before an Indian, who rose out of the bushes.
Latimer seemed to hold a brief conversation with this Indian. His attitude was that of a man talking with the Indian in a friendly manner, rather than otherwise. But before the conversation had proceeded far other Indians jumped out of the undergrowth, and these made Latimer a prisoner.
What had before seemed so like treachery on Latimer’s part looked altogether different now; and, seeing that he needed aid, Buffalo Bill started hurriedly to help him, gliding through the bushes with the silence and ease of a serpent.
Then another and most peculiar thing happened:
A young man leaped out of the undergrowth—a young man who swung a heavy rifle as a club. He attacked the Indians with an awful ferocity, smashing at them as if he cared not for his own life or the risks he ran.
While he thus attacked the redskins a young woman came running out into the little glade where these things were taking place. There she halted, pitching a little rifle up to her shoulder. She stood like a picture framed by the greenery, just long enough to enable her to draw the rifle sights down on the fighting men; and then the little rifle cracked.
One of the Indians, who had been making the stiffest fight against the young man, fell at the report of the rifle. The second Indian the young man knocked down. The third took to his heels, and was followed quickly by the one whom the youth had knocked over.