Charley Shafer shot a look of admiration into White Lasso’s face; but the next words that fell from the Indian’s lips blanched his cheek.
“White Lasso cut boy’s heart ’fore he give ’im back to upper Pawnees.”
The night closed about the party before they entered the Indian village, and without exciting many of its inhabitants. Charley Shafer reached his captor’s tent.
“White boy tired; he sleep now,” said the chief, pointing to a couch of buffalo skins, in one corner of the lodge. “Nobody hurt ’im. White Lasso stand ’tween ’im and Upper Pawnees, Red Eagle and Kenoagla.”
The boy started.
If those three evils should combine against him, what could White Lasso do? The answer to this interrogative came to him in the echo of the Pawnee’s words.
“White Lasso cut boy’s heart ’fore he give ’im back to Upper Pawnee.”
With a sigh that indicated the prostration of a human frame, the peril-environed Ohio youth threw himself upon the skins and immediately went to sleep.
He dreamed of home in that peaceful slumber—not of his own danger, nor of his young comrade, who, during his sleep, was being ingulfed by the treacherous quicksand with a Pawnee lariat around his body.
After watching his captive awhile, White Lasso stole from the lodge, on tip-toe, and walked away.