While the thrilling scenes recorded above were transpiring on the banks of the Platte, the fate of two beautiful girls was being decided not many miles away.
To this scene we turn, for it is time that one of the most prominent actors in our wild western drama should appear in the mad, relentless role he has to play.
The somber shades of evening were prevailing when two score and six horsemen entered the great village of the Pawnee Loups, situated on the head-waters of the Loup fork of Platte. The hardy mustangs gave forth evidences of fatigue, their flanks reeked with sweat, and several seemed on the eve of dropping to the earth from utter exhaustion.
The mustangs’ riders, with four exceptions, were Indians, great stalwart fellows, naked to the waist, and painted for the murderous foray.
Their leader—let me describe their leader.
He was a white man, whose tanned countenance denoted a roving, restless life. His face was faultless to the minutest particular; his eyes were dark and piercing, like the eagle’s, and an ocean of long raven locks fell ever his rich crimson serape. His head was crowned by a black sombrero, whose snow-white plume swept his silken hair, while his waist was encircled by a crimson scarf, worked with mythological designs in gold thread. His fingers, as white and delicately shaped as a woman’s, glittered with gems, set in hoops of gold—jewels, which were, no doubt, the fruits of a raid upon some rich New Mexican hacienda. The ornamented butts of two revolvers showed themselves above the scarf, and at his side hung a short Spanish sword, whose metallic scabbard, carved with quaint designs, among them the Departure of Boabdil, proclaimed it a relic of early Spanish days.
To complete the fantastic costume of the Pawnees’ king
“Spanish spurs, with bells of steel,
Dashed and jingled at his heel!”
He possessed the air and bearing of one born to command; he could have brought subordination from the most mutinous of Cossack bands, with the flashings of his eyes; he was, to sum up all in a nutshell, “half angel and half Lucifer.”