[Both dog and man were rolling together upon the ground.]
At this moment we rode in upon the struggle. Ere the Indian could rise and shake himself loose from his savage assailant I had struck him a violent blow upon the head with the butt of my gun, which effectually put a stop to all power of resistance; then ordering the dog to loose his hold, we had time to take note of both dog and captive. The first-named was bleeding profusely from an arrow, which the Indian had shot at him at the moment he had entered the thicket. The shaft had struck full upon his breast between his fore legs, but the direction of the arrow fired from on horseback was downwards, and the point had penetrated the flesh and muscle of his chest, coming out again beneath his ribs. Still it was an ugly wound, one half-inch higher, or fired even from the level of a man on foot instead of on horseback, and the poor dog must have been a dead animal.
But it is these half-inches that make all the difference between a dead dog and a captured Assineboine; for, as the reader must be aware, the Indian was no other than the scout on his way to reconnoitre from the south the camp we had so lately quitted.
And now the question presented itself to our minds what was to be done with the captive. The Cree’s solution was perfectly simple—it was to instantly despatch him as he lay, and with his scalp and his horse in our possession (for the steed had in true Indian fashion stopped when his rider fell) resume our way; but I could not hear of this proposal. First tying the Assineboine, so that no attempt at escape could become possible even if he were sufficiently recovered from the vigorous application of the butt of the gun, I next examined carefully the dog’s wound, and having extracted the arrow by breaking the shaft outside the wound and drawing the head fully out, we saw that it was not dangerous. Then we caught the Assineboine’s pony, and bringing the steed to its fallen rider—who by this time had sufficiently recovered consciousness to be fully aware of all that had passed and was passing around him—we made him mount his horse, his arms still remaining tied; then passing a leather line tightly round his legs, we strapped our prisoner to the horse’s girth, and passing a double line through the animal’s mouth, remounted our own horses, and set out on our road—first having given the Assineboine a pretty intelligible hint that any attempt to escape would quickly cause the revolver in my holster to speak its mind.
The course was now to the north, and for some hours we held our way in silence, through the small hills and deep valleys in which thickets of alders and cotton-wood trees abounded. In many places the grass rose above our horses’ knees thick and dry, the hot sun of the summer, now nearly over, had made it as sere and yellow as straw, and it sounded against the horses’ legs like stalks of corn, as our file of horsemen came along at a good pace through hill and dale.
I now realized as I rode through this tangled mass of dry vegetation what a prairie fire must be when it has such a material to feed on in its rapid flight across the plains in autumn. For the first time, too, as I rode along this day, the idea of my being the leader of a separate movement of the character of a branch expedition became present to my mind. I felt elated to think that in such a very short space of time I had reached the real home of adventure, and was bearing my part in the wild work of the wilderness. I had each day learned something of that life I had so often longed for, and as my experience had widened out, it seemed that each item of knowledge gained had also lengthened out the time, and distance.
I could scarcely believe that it was but a week since we had started on this journey with only the hope of toiling on day by day into the prairie. Already we had become actors in a real adventure, and were engaged in the performance of those things the mere recital of which at home had so often given me the keenest pleasure.
While thinking these pleasant thoughts now as we rode along, I nevertheless watched with jealous eye the security of our prisoner. I was especially anxious to take the Assineboine alive into camp; the Cree’s method would on no account have suited me. I desired to be able to hand over the prisoner to Red Cloud, and to say, “Here is an Assineboine brave taken by your dog. The Cree wanted to kill him. Dead men tell no tales; but neither can they give any information. From this man you will hear all news—the Assineboine plans will be laid bare to you.”