"He will carry you as far as needful," was the reply, ominous in its grim brevity. "Quick, mount."

As he turned to obey a wild thought rushed through the adventurer's mind. Could he not seize the opportunity to make a dash for it? His wily guards must have read his thoughts, for, catching his eye, they shook their heads with a ferocious grin. Then with a raw hide thong they secured their prisoner's feet beneath the horse's belly, and one of them winding the end of the lariat rope which served as a bridle round his hand, the band started.

Ever with a keen eye to opportunity, Vipan noted two things--one that the band had undergone diminution by at least half its original number, the other that they were travelling almost due north-east. The halt had been made not many miles from the fatal gorge, whose frowning entrance he could just see as he turned his head.

No one could be more thoroughly aware than himself of the desperate strait into which he had fallen. He had witnessed more than one instance of men taking their own lives at the last critical moment to avoid capture and its inevitable sequel, a lingering death amid tortures too horrible to name. And now even that alternative was denied to him.

The opportunity was past and gone.

"Ha, Golden Face," said War Wolf, ranging his horse alongside his prisoner. "You thought I should have been hung before this."

"Well, yes, I did. How did you manage to get clear?"

Then the savage, in fits of laughter, narrated all that had befallen him at Fort Price; how, after a time, he had been allowed a certain amount of guarded liberty, and how he had deftly managed to disarm the sentry and make his escape. It was a bold exploit, and so his listener candidly told him.

"Ha!" cried the warrior, chuckling and swelling with inflated vanity, "I am a man. Even the stone walls of the Mehneaska cannot hold me. I laugh, and down they go!"

Several of the Indians gathered around, and the conversation became lively. No one would have thought that this white man in their midst, with whom they were chatting and laughing so gaily was a prisoner, doomed to the most barbarous of deaths at their hands. The conversation turned on his own capture, and, in a nonchalant way, Vipan asked for particulars of that feat.

"Ha! Burnt Shoes is not a fool," said War Wolf. "He is my brother."

The warrior named grinned, and at a word from the chief he narrated how he had slipped away from the main body, and, un.o.bserved by the prisoner, had gained the rocks over the latter's head. When he was ready he had signalled to his fellows, who had made that unexpected move in order to fix the prisoner's attention. He could easily have shot his enemy, but the temptation to take him alive was great. Therefore, seeing a convenient boulder handy, he had hurled it upon his enemy's head, with the most satisfactory result to himself and his tribesmen.

"But," added this candid young barbarian, "your scalp will be mine, anyhow."

Vipan took no notice of this remark. He knew the speaker by sight apart from having recognised him as War Wolfs brother. Then he asked what had become of Satanta.

Here the Indians looked foolish, at least most of them did, while those who did not, unmercifully chaffed their companions. It came out that the black steed objected to the new ownership which it was purposed to a.s.sert over him, and watching his opportunity, which occurred while his saddle was being changed during the recent halt, had concluded to part company with the band. In a word, he had started off as fast as his legs could carry him. But several warriors had gone after him, added the speaker.

"They are after a shooting star, then," said Satanta's lawful owner.

"They had the best horse in the North-West, and they have let him slip through their hands."

The party had been travelling at a rapid pace, and now the day was merging into twilight. Despatching pickets to neighbouring heights, the savages prepared for a good long halt.

Vipan was released from his steed, and allowed to seat himself upon the ground by the side of a fire that had been built. His captors crowded round him, laughing and talking in the friendliest fashion, and, noting it, his heart sank within him.

And who shall blame him? Bound and helpless, he knew the moment had come for putting him to the most h.e.l.lish tortures. He read it in the grim, painted visages closing him in on every side. And between those ruthless demon-faces he beheld in the background a sight whose meaning he knew but too well.

Two Indians were busy driving strong pegs into the ground at intervals of several feet apart.

Then he did a strange thing. Quick as thought, and without any warning, he spat full into War Wolfs face.

With a yell of rage, the young chief, starting back, swung his tomahawk in the air. In another instant the prisoner would have gained his wish.

He intended to exasperate the Indian into killing him on the spot.

But the others were wider awake. Seizing their chiefs arm, a couple of bystanders succeeded in arresting the blow. Then half-a-dozen sinewy warriors flinging themselves upon Vipan began to drag him towards the pegs aforesaid.

A barbarity popular among the Plains' tribes is that known as "staking out." The wretched captive is stripped and thrown on his back. Each hand and foot is then fastened to a peg driven firmly into the ground at the necessary distance apart. Thus spread-eagled, he is powerless to stir, beyond a limited wriggle. Then the fun begins, and when is remembered the hideous agony that a handful of live coals stacked against the soles of a man's feet alone is warranted to produce, it follows that the amount of burning at the disposal of the red demons before death mercifully delivers the victim from their power is practically unlimited. In fact, their h.e.l.lish sport may be bounded not by hours, but even by days. They generally begin by roasting the tenderest parts of the body, finally piling up the fire all over the stomach and chest of the sufferer.

Vipan, aware of the fate in store for him, seized his opportunity.

While the savages were slightly relaxing their grasp in order to pull off his clothes, he made one stupendous effort. Cramped as he was, his herculean strength stood him in good stead. A couple of violent kicks in the stomach sent as many warriors to the earth gasping, and dragging others with them in their fall. Like a thunderbolt he dashed through the group, and before his enemies had recovered from their confusion he was many rods away, speeding down the hillside like a deer.

A frightful yell went up from the startled redskins. A score of rifles covered the flying fugitive, but a peremptory word from War Wolf knocked them up. Their prisoner was safe enough, no need to spoil sport by killing him. Though his legs where free, his arms were bound. A rush was made for the ponies. The plain was open for miles and miles. In five minutes they would retake him with ease.

Of this Vipan was only too well aware. The chances of escape had never entered into his calculations when he made his wild attempt. On foot and unbound he might have distanced the savages, but what chance had he against their ponies? A water-hole lay in the bottom, a mile away. He would strive to reach this, and, bound as he was, an easy death by drowning would be the alternative to hours of fiery torment.

And as he ran it seemed to the hunted man that this was no real occurrence--only a horrid nightmare. The events of a lifetime shot through his mind. Then the thunder of flying hoofs behind.

He glanced over his shoulder. Would he reach the water? Ah, never did hunted man strain every nerve and muscle for life as did this one with death before him as the prize.

Nearer! The water-hole gleams cool and inviting. A hundred yards--then fifty. The roar and thunder of hoofs is in his ears. It stuns him.

Now for the final leap. Then death! Twenty steps more. He poises himself for the final spring. But it is not to be. The coil of a lazo has settled around him; he is jerked from his feet, dragged back a dozen yards--stunned, half senseless.

Then, as he wearily opens his eyes, doubtful whether he is dead or alive, he finds himself in the midst of a crowd of Indians, all mounted save the half-dozen who have run forward to secure him. With a sensation of surprise, his glance wanders amid the sea of painted visages--of surprise because many of them are known to him, and were certainly not among the band that effected his capture. And--can he believe his ears?--the chief of the party, a fine martial-looking warrior, is giving instructions that his bonds shall be cut.

"Wagh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the latter, with the ghost of a smile. "You have fallen upon rough times, Golden Face."

Then the prisoner, once more a free man, looked up at the speaker and knew that he was safe. He recognised Mahto-sapa.

And now a great hubbub arose as War Wolf and his party rode up, and angrily demanded their prisoner, emphasising their request by making a dash at the latter. But at a sign from the chief a dozen warriors placed themselves in front of Vipan.

Then the debate began to wax very breezy, and small wonder. By every right of immemorial custom and usage, the late prisoner was absolutely their property, and had they not been "choused" out of a rare and exquisitely enjoyable form of sport? Vipan, though too far off to hear all that was being said, caught the name "Tatanka-yotanka" as mentioned pretty frequently, and it seemed to have the effect of a damper on War Wolf. That impulsive savage, having indulged in a good deal of swagger, ended by sullenly accepting the situation. There is not much hard-and-fast law among Indians in a matter of this kind. If the redoubted war-chief of the Minneconjou clan, surrounded by a large armed force, chose to retain half-a-dozen prisoners, War Wolf, who was not, properly speaking, a chief at all, had no redress, save such as he might attain by force of arms. But his following numbered barely thirty warriors, whereas Mahto-sapa was at the head of fully five times that number.

Dismounting, the Minneconjou chief gravely sat down upon the ground.

Then filling his pipe, and applying a light to the bowl, he handed it to Vipan without a word. In silence the latter received it, and after a few puffs handed it back.

"What was said just now about Sitting Bull?" he enquired at length.

"This. I have come out to look for you, Golden Face. Sitting Bull is anxious that you should visit him."

"Oho, I begin to see," said the adventurer to himself, as he lazily watched his late captors draw their ponies out of the crowd and ride sullenly away.

Now, in the debate just held, his rescuer had justified his action on twofold ground. War Wolf having allowed his prisoner to escape had forfeited all claim to him; secondly, the said prisoner, being an Englishman, his presence was required by Sitting Bull, the renowned chief of the hostiles, for political purposes.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

THE VILLAGE OF THE HOSTILES.

All night long--with a brief halt towards morning--the war-party, with Vipan in its midst, pushed forward at a rapid pace.

The sun rose. They had pa.s.sed the intricate defiles of the Bad Lands, and were now threading the rugged and broken country beyond. Piled in chaotic confusion, the great peaks leaning towards each other, or split and riven as by a t.i.tanic wedge, caught the first red glow upon their iron faces. Dark pinnacles soaring aloft, huge and forbidding, stood in the first delicate flush like graceful minarets; and here and there through a vista of falling slopes, the striped and fantastic face of a _mesa_ would come into view, seamed with blue and black and red, according to the varying strata of its soft and ever-crumbling formation. A hundred bizarre shapes reared their heads around. Here a clean rock shaft, so even and perpendicular in its towering symmetry that it seemed impossible to have been planned by the hand of Nature alone, standing side by side with some hugely grotesque representation of a head, changing from animal to human with every fresh point of view, so distorted yet so real, so hideous and repelling as to suggest involuntary thoughts of a demon-guarded land. There a black and yawning fissure whose polished sides would hardly seem to afford resting-place for the eyrie of yon great war-eagle soaring high above, his plumage gleaming in the l.u.s.tre of the new-born day. Dark, cedar-clad gorges rent the mountain sides, and on the nearer slopes the flash of something white through the tall, straight stems of the spruce firs showed where a deer, alarmed by this redoubtable inroad on his early grazing ground, had darted away, with a whisk of his white "flag."

And in thorough keeping with its surroundings was the aspect of the wild host, threading its way through these solitudes. A clear, dashing mountain brook curved and sparkled along a level bottom carpeted with the greenest of sweet gra.s.s, and along this, strung out to the distance of a mile, cantered group after group of mounted savages, the fantastic adornments of themselves and their steeds streaming out to the morning breeze; their waving plumes, and painted faces, their shining weapons and brilliantly-coloured accoutrements, and the easy grace with which they sat their steeds as they defiled along the ever-winding gorge, forming about as striking and wildly picturesque a sight as would be happened upon, travel we the whole world over.

All fear of pursuit being now over, the warriors rode anyhow, broken up into groups or couples as the humour possessed them. Most of them were chatting and laughing with that ease and light-heartedness which in their hours of relaxation is characteristic of most savage peoples, a light-heartedness and freedom from care which renders them akin to children. Near the rear of the party rode Mahto-sapa and his prisoner, together with three or four warriors of high rank.

For that he was such, Vipan himself was not left in any doubt, nor was there room for any. Though relieved from the indignity of bonds, yet his arms had not been returned to him, not even a knife. Moreover, the steed he bestrode was far from being the best in the party. All of which he had hinted as delicately as possible to the chief. The latter's reply was characteristic.