Part 4 (1/2)

”I'll bring you out all right!” he said ”I owe you a life anyway for saving ery when I was in Illinois, and I guess I can fix you up”

He got on-bohich he made into a splint, set the fracture But our enterprise was at an end Help would have to be found now, and before spring One h the winter

It was detero for this needful assistance just as soon as possible He placed me on our little bunk, with plenty of blankets to cover me All our provisions he put within ton out so that I could reach this cup out to a snow-bank for reat pile of wood and heaped it near the fire Without leaving the bunk I could thus do a little cooking, keep the fire up, and eat and sleep It was not a situation that I would have chosen, but there was nothing else to do

The nearest settlement was a hundred and twenty-five ured that he could make the round trip in twenty days My supplies were aed hiht the sooner return with a new yoke of oxen Then I could be hauled out to where medical attendance was to be had

I watched him start off afoot, andof an to find ways and ht with us a nu hours But the days grew longer and longer for all that Everystick toI had cut twelve of these notches when oneI akened from a sound sleep by the touch of a hand on ton had returned, I was about to cry out in delight when I caught a glily, painted face of a Sioux brave

The brilliant colors that had been se told me more forcibly than words could have done that his tribe was on the warpath

It was a decidedly unpleasant discovery for e what I was doing there, and howthrough the door till the little dugout was packed as full of Sioux warriors as it could hold

Outside I could hear the sta of horses and the voices of more warriors I

And then a stately old brave worked his way through the crowd and came toward my bunk It was plain from the deference accorded him by the others that he was a chief And as soon as I set eyes on hinized him as old Rain-in-the-Face, whom I had often seen and talked with at Fort Larae as we played about the wagon-beds together A these children was the son who succeeded to the name of Rain-in-the-Face, and who years later, it is asserted, killed General George A Custer in theHorn

I showed the chief , and asked him if he did not remember me He replied that he did I asked him if he intended to kill the boy who had been his children's playun busily to loot the cabin After a long parley the old un and pistol and all arded as the spoils of the war

Vainly I pointed out that he ht as well kill ainst wolves He said that his youngto spare my life As for food, he pointed to the carcass of a deer that hung fro they h to see the by a thread while I had been their involuntary host Only my friendshi+p with the children of old Rain-in-the-Face had saved one, I was in a desperate situation As they had taken allcontinuously Thisat a tian to tell on me I would cut slices fro it over the fire with a long stick, cook it, eating it without salt Coffee I ether

The second day after the departure of the Indians a great snow fell

The drifts blocked the doorway and covered the s It lay to a depth of several feet on the roof over my head My woodpile was covered by the snow that drifted in and it ith great difficulty that I could get enough wood to keepAnd on that fire depended e that the heavy snoould be sure to delay Harrington

I would lie there, day after day, a prey to all sorts of dark is I fancied him killed by Indians on the trail, or sobund and starving on the Plains Eachmy notches on rew till at last the twentieth was duly cut But no Harrington caather round in increasing nus, and pawed and scratched and dug at the snow by the doorway, deterout contained, myself included

How I endured it I do not know But the Plains teach men and boys fortitude Many and many a time as I lay there I resolved that if I should ever be spared to go back to my home and friends, the frontier should know me no more

It was on the twenty-ninth day, as iven up hope, that I heard a cheerful voice shouting ”Whoa!” and recognized it as the voice of Harrington A criminal on the scafford with the noose about his neck and the trap sagging underneath his feet could not have welcoerly than I welcomed my deliverance out of this torture-chamber

I could make no effort to open the door for him But I found voice to answer him when he cried ”hello, Billy!” and in response to his question assured hih the snow, and stood beside ain,” he said; ”I had a terrible trip I didn't think I should ever get through--caught in the snowstorm and laid up for three days The cattle wandered away and I caot started again the snoas so deep I couldn'thiton had made a trip few men could have made He had risked his life to save ht a yoke of oxen over a country where the trails were all obscured and the blinding snow made every added mile more perilous