“Could I not give her a hint that you wished her to remain?”
“It would be impossible to do so without disclosing your design, and you must be very careful of your looks as well as your words, or she will guess it. Don’t let my selfishness trouble you. You must know that I did not speak in earnest.”
Flora left the little cave with a heavy heart. It went hard with her to give pain to the man who had rescued her from the Blackfeet, and who had always shown himself so kind and considerate. She had not thought of the possibility of being separated from Dove-eye, when she and Wilder should be released, and the thought troubled her when it was forced upon her. Dove-eye would not then have guessed, from her joyful and excited manner, that she had received some very good tidings; on the contrary, she would have been likely to ask what had happened to make her so sad and woebegone. But the Indian girl was too much occupied in preparations for the morrow to notice the changes in the demeanor of her friend.
The day passed off pretty much as usual, and at night the old medicine-man went into a trance. That is, he stretched himself out in state in the principal room of the lodge, and Dove-eye declared that he had gone to the spirit-land. José was sent to the village to inform the warriors that they might come and visit him, and Flora, after a tender leave-taking with Dove-eye, repaired to Wilder’s cave.
She seated herself by the side of the invalid, and waited anxiously and impatiently for the issue of her plans. Wilder told her that a yell would be the signal of the onset, and both listened, eagerly and painfully, for the savage slogan.
Wilder said nothing more of his fears concerning the probable loss of Dove-eye, and Flora did not mention the subject. Both were too much absorbed in listening for the yell, which she longed but almost dreaded to hear. When it came, at last, their nerves had been so strained by their long suspense, that it fell upon them like a thunderbolt.
The Arapaho warriors had come from the village, in a long and solemn procession, to look upon their great medicine-man, who, as they firmly believed, had the power of going to the spirit-land and returning whenever he chose to do so--in others words, of dying and coming to life. George Benning and White Shield had stationed the band of Crows in a ravine near which the procession must pass, and the warriors from the north gazed from their hiding-place at their enemies, gloating over the rich prospect of scalps.