CHAPTER XLIX.CONCLUSION.
The wondering Indians allowed the White Antelope and Long Hair to pass. Inside the teepee an old woman kept watch and guard. A figure lay upon a heap of furs. It moved as the scout entered, raised on its elbow, and a weak voice exclaimed:
“By the nine gods of war! Thanks be it’s you, Cody! I thought you’d never come, though this dear girl here swore you would, as you had promised her.”
To see one whom we believe dead—aye, have seen lying stark on the field of battle and believe to have been buried there—rise up suddenly and confront us is indeed a shock. Buffalo Bill fell back a step, exclaiming:
“Dick Danforth!”
“’Tis I, old faithful! Thanks to this girl—who is the whitest Injun God ever made—I am alive, the sole survivor of my unfortunate party.”
“Dick, I saw you lying on the field of battle,” declared the scout, taking his hand. “How came you here?”
“She brought me back to life. She found there was life in me. I had got a terrible crack on the head. She and the old woman brought me here, and I have been hidden in this teepee ever since. I’m a whole lot better now, Cody. I believe I could ride a horse.”
“And the White Antelope has cared for you?” cried the scout.
“She has, indeed.” Then the young man whispered: “Isn’t she beautiful? And how glad I am, old man, that you stayed my hand that day when I would have murdered her!”
“Ho, ho!” muttered the scout. “Sets the wind in that quarter? I must tell you two young people something before more mischief be done.”
He seized the girl’s hand and drew her forward to the side of Danforth’s couch.
“White Antelope,” he said in English, “do you remember that I told you once I knew your mother?”
She nodded, watching him with bright eyes.
“She was a lovely woman. She was a white woman. It was true she was Oak Heart’s wife, but she had been espoused before by a good and great white man. He was killed by Oak Heart’s people, and for a time your mother was stricken by the mercy of the Great Spirit with forgetfulness.
“When she came to herself she believed that her husband and her son were dead. She became Oak Heart’s squaw. But her son was not dead. I had saved him from the Indians, and he lived to grow up——”
Danforth raised himself up with a great cry.
“You do not mean it! It is impossible!” he cried. “This girl——?”
“Is your sister. White Antelope, this young man is your elder brother—and a mighty fine fellow you’ll find him. Your mother was the finest woman I ever knew, andyourfather, Dick—God help him!—was once the finest fellow in the world!”
The scout choked and was silent. He was thinking of that awful, convulsed face of the Mad Hunter as he fell backward from the summit of the bluff, with Texas Jack’s bullet in his brain!
“He—he is my brother?” murmured the girl, her eyes shining.
“That’s what he is,” said the scout, recovering himself and speaking heartily.
She went to Danforth and put both her hands in his. The young fellow suddenly pulled her down to him and kissed her on the lips.
“That’s the waywhitebrothers and sisters greet each other,” he said, with a weak laugh. “When can you get us away from this camp, Cody?”
That was a question easier to be asked than answered. But the excitement over the letting of Cody himself go free aided them in their attempt. The chiefs were murmuring against the decision of Oak Heart. The old man was fighting for his supremacy as head chief of the tribe. He could not even see the White Antelope, and shut her out of his lodge.
This piqued the wayward girl. She was the more ready to go with her new-found brother, as he was ill and needed her. But she only agreed to go with him to Fort Resistence and then directly return. But Dick Danforth said confidently:
“Let me once get her away from the influence of these bloody redskins, and I’ll wean her away fromthem. I know what will please a young girl like her. I’ll take her to San Francisco, Bill. Thanks to you, I’ve some property of my own left of my poor father’s estate. And isn’t she a beauty! Won’t she make ’em sit up and take notice at the Bay?”
Under cover of the night the scout and the Indian maid helped the wounded Danforth upon a horse, and the three wended their way from the encampment. They were not followed—or, at least, were not overtaken—until they reached Captain Keyes’ command. Then they were hurried on under an escort to Resistence. White Antelope made no objection to going, her brother was so weak and needed her so much.
Indeed, the wily young fellow remained an invalid so long that his sister became half-reconciled to civilized clothing and to white people before they took the long journey to San Francisco, where Dick went to spend the furlough allowed him by the department.
The scene changes once more to Fort Advance, some days after that on which Buffalo Bill, the Border King, had set out on his dangerous mission to the village of the Sioux. It is a little past sunrise, and a horseman is descried taking the trail from the cañon toward the fort. He is mounted on a great white charger that comes like the wind.
The rider looks pale and jaded, and his buckskin attire has seen hard usage. But he is recognized by the sentinel over the gate, and his cry is repeated about the fort:
“Here comes Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border!”
Waving his battered hat in response to the shout,Buffalo Bill rides straight to the open gate, enters, and dismounts before Major Baldwin’s door. An orderly seizes his bridle-rein, and the major comes forth and grasps the scout’s hand with the words:
“Thanks be to God for seeing you again alive, Cody! When Keyes told me you were safe, I felt like ordering a feast to celebrate the occasion. And they say the Sioux are ready for peace?”
“I believe they are. Oak Heart has pretty much lost his grip on the tribe, and is an outcast. But the new powers-that-be have seen the fallacy of trying issues again with us.”
“We certainly believed you dead one while, Cody.”
“And it was a close shave not to be this time, sir.”
“You have won out as usual, Bill, with flying colors.”
“Yes, Major Baldwin. I went to Oak Heart’s village with the firm determination to get Boyd Bennett if it cost me my life. That scoundrel had been a thorn in my side too long. I got him. He’s dead. He’ll do no more harmthisside of the Great Divide!”
“A good piece of work, Cody. And I understand that old maniac, the Mad Hunter, who attacked Keyes, is dead, too?”
“That is so. But I am sorry forhisend. I tell you in confidence, major, that the man was Dick Danforth’s father—though I never suspected it until I saw his face close to. The Indians were supposed to have cracked him on the head and flung him into the river years ago. The crack on the head was sure enough. But he wasn’t drowned. His end has come now, poor fellow.”
“AndDickwonderfully saved!”
“He is, indeed—and has found a sister.”
“Ah, Cody! That was a joker you kept up your sleeve a long time,” said the major.
“True. I knew the boy’s hatred for all savages. I did not know about his poor mother and this girl until I had really instilled some of the boy’s hatred into his mind myself. I feared for him to know the truth. Yet I wanted to save her from the savages. Providence performed what I could not.”
“True.... But those scalp-locks, Cody?” asked Major Baldwin, pointing to the string of ghastly trophies hanging from the scout’s belt.
“Oh, those are the roofs of the braves who tried to raise my hair. I intended to have a rope made of them to hang Boyd Bennett with, but I’ll have them made into a bridle for you, instead, major.”
“All right, scout. Thank you for the gift. And now you are free. Report to me in full when you have rested,” and with another hand-clasp the major let him go.
Many other hands were waiting to clasp that of the Border King. It was some time before he could break away and find Texas Jack in the scouts’ quarters.
But times of rest were few and far between for these hardy men of the frontier. One tribe of red men were scarcely subjugated for the time when another would rise up to kill and slay. It was not long before Buffalo Bill was performing more daring deeds to add to his fame upon the border.
THE END.