Once the Indian girl thought of arousing the village, and thus baffle the designs which were to be carried out when the dark clouds settled over the disk of the moon; but when she recollected that desperate men would do desperate deeds, and that the entire village swarmed with plots and counterplots, and traitors of the deepest dye, she relinquished all such intentions and resolved to do it all herself.
She hurried toward White Lasso’s lodge; but now two Indians guarded it, and the chief was not to be seen.
She felt that she was suspected.
For several minutes she watched the lodge, but the Pawnee did not return. She crept to the base of the structure, and heard the regular breathings of a sound sleeper.
Charley Shafer was still there.
While she listened, the whinny of a mustang reached her ears, and drove her to her feet.
The next moment she was hurrying cautiously toward the western suburbs of the village.
The whinny had told her much that was startling, and presently she saw an Indian holding three horses by the bridles on the banks of the Pawnee Loup.
Treason was hatching, and the shell would soon be broken by the giant offspring.
The girl crept near the horses, taking good care to keep to windward, and all at once she dropped in the grass, and griped the silvered butt of the revolver which Pawnee ferocity had torn from the hand of some murdered emigrant.