Seth nodded.
“All right. I understand. You’re a good squaw, Wanaha.”
He passed on, for Wanaha waited for no questions. She had done what she thought best. Had not Nevil seen the gravity of the matter? But of her own accord she had gone further than her instructions. She had warned Seth, whom Nevil had said must not be told. For once in her life Wanaha had exercised her own judgment in defiance of her husband’s.
The squaw passed down the deep prairie furrow while Seth held to the trail. And the man’s thoughts went back to the interview he had had with Rosebud that morning. So it was Wanaha who had caused her to come to him.
CHAPTER XV
THE MOVEMENTS OF LITTLE BLACK FOX
The woodlands on the northern side of the great Reservations of Dakota amount almost to a forest. From Beacon Crossing, after entering the Pine Ridge Reservation, a man might travel the whole length of the Indian territory without the slightest chance of discovery, even by the Indians themselves; that is, provided he be a good woodsman. And this is what Seth accomplished. He did it without any seeming care or unusual caution. But then he was consummate in the necessary craft which is to be found only amongst the sons of the soil, and, even then, rarely outside the few who have been associated with Indians all their lives.
It was soon after sunrise on Monday morning that Seth found himself in the neighborhood of the principal Indian camp of the Rosebuds. Yet none had seen him come. He was hidden in the midst of a wide, undergrown bluff. Directly in front of him, but with at least four hundred yards of uninterrupted view intervening, was the house of Little Black Fox.