The Prairie Chief

by R. M. Ballantyne

“No, that cannot be,” returned the youth, who saw—indeed the child intended—nothing humorous in the remark. “No, I will never more laugh, or pull the string of the jumping-jack; but,” he added, with sudden animation, as a thought struck him, “Eaglenose will bring the jumping-jack to the camp of Bounding Bull, and put it in the hands of the skipping one, though his scalp should swing for it in the smoke of her father’s wigwam.”

He stooped, took the little face between his hands, and kissed it on both cheeks.

“Don’t—don’t leave me,” said the child, beginning to whimper.

“The chief commands, and Eaglenose must obey,” said the youth.

He gently unclasped the little hands, and silently glided into the forest.

Meanwhile Moonlight, utterly forgetting amid her anxieties the arrangement about Skipping Rabbit, sauntered back again through the camp till she reached the opposite extremity, which lay nearest to the willow swamp. The lines here were not guarded so carefully, because the nature of the ground rendered that precaution less needful. She therefore managed to pass the sentinels without much difficulty, and found, as she had been told, that one of her father’s horses was feeding near the willow swamp. Its two fore-legs were fastened together to prevent it straying, so that she caught it easily. Having provided herself with a strong supple twig, she cut the hobbles, vaulted lightly on the horse’s back, and went off at a smart gallop.

Moonlight did not quite agree with her mother as to the effect of disappointment on her lover. Although heaviness of heart might possibly induce him to ride slowly, she thought it much more likely that exasperation of spirit would urge him to ride with reckless fury. Therefore she plied her switch vigorously, and, the light increasing as she came to more open ground, she was able to speed swiftly over a wide stretch of country, with which she had been familiar from childhood, in the hope of intercepting the Blackfoot chief.

After a couple of hours’ hard riding, she came to a narrow pass through which she knew her lover must needs go if he wished to return home by the same path that had led him to the camp of his enemy. Jumping quickly from her steed, she went down on her knees and examined the track. A sigh of relief escaped her, for it was evident that no one had passed there that day towards the west. There was just a bare possibility, however, that the chief had taken another route homeward, but Moonlight tried hard to shut her eyes to that fact, and, being sanguine of temperament she succeeded.

Retiring into a thicket, she tied her horse to a tree, and then returned to watch the track.

While seated there on a fallen tree, thinking with much satisfaction of some of her recent adventures, she suddenly conceived a little plot, which was more consistent with the character of Skipping Rabbit than herself, and rose at once to put it into execution. With a knife which she carried in her girdle she cut and broke down the underwood at the side of the track, and tramped about so as to make a great many footmarks. Then, between that point and the thicket where her steed was concealed, she walked to and fro several times, cutting and breaking the branches as she went, so as to make a wide trail, and suggest the idea of a hand-to-hand conflict having taken place there. She was enabled to make these arrangements all the more easily that the moon was by that time shining brightly, and revealing objects almost as clearly as if it had been noonday.