894

INDIAN TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES.

more and more attention from the crowd, seeing which, her violence and energy redoubled itself. Her voice broke with the fury of her passion, but still she kept on with ear-piercing screams and howls, which rose higher and higher, until they formed a mighty wail, sounding far down the valley. By this time the whole assemblage became perfectly silent. As the old woman's strength was about to fail her, a great jabbering set up in the crowd, in the midst of which a number of squaws ran to the stake, and scolding the warriors all the while, quickly unbound Wallace and handed him over to the old woman.

The singular scene grew out of the fact that the old squaw, having lost a son in battle, claimed Big Foot as a substitute in accordance with the custom of the tribe, but the warriors wanted to have the fun of putting their prisoner to death.

Big Foot's adopted mother took him to her lodge with every sign of gratified affection. In a little while the squaws brought him his gun, knife, and gourd. Even Comanche was hunted up and brought to him. The dog looked half starved and as if he had been kicked by every boy in the village. Big Foot, with cool adaptation to circumstances which no man ever had but a genuine Texan Ranger, proceeded to ransack the wigwam for cold victuals, and gave the dog every thing he found.

Besides the old squaw, Big Foot found a firm friend in her remaining son, his adopted brother, Black Wolf. As time went on, the chief wanted Big Foot to marry his sister, but the white man told him that he preferred to live in the lodge with his mother and brother. Black Wolf was an Indian of intelligence and kindness. He never wearied of asking Big Foot about the white race. All the information which Wallace gave him of their numbers, their cities, their weapons, and their great "steam canoes," strengthened him in his opinion, he said, that the white man would gradually overrun the entire continent, and that a few stone arrow-heads, thrown up here and there by the farmer's plow, would be all that remained of the red man's race.   In this connection Black Wolf related to Big Foot