Red Plume — page 78: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

78 RED PLUME. on a buffalo-skin. The chief was restless and perturbed ; his fever gave him temporary strength; he rose from his couch, threw a red blanket over his fat form, and sallied out of the lodge, without waking the old woman. He walked forth, unnoticed and unnoticing, not knowing where he went, be- yond the village, into. the wooded plain. He had not gone far before he missed his uncertain foot- ing, and fell feebly into a small gully. He must have lain there a long time, but. he regained his disordered senses at last, and succeeded 1 in crawling, out of the gully and standing up- right. As he did so, the form of a warrior passed before him. He threw aside his blanket to look at it, and instantly recog- nized, or thought he did, the hated and “dreaded features of his rival and would-be- -murderer, Kotselo, the Red Plume! The sight was too much for the weak mind and body “of the wounded chief. He imagined nothing else than that he. was to be assassinated, and that sure work was to be made x of it this time. Full of fear and horror, he threw up his hands, one of. which was shining with phosphorus from some decayed wood by which he had lain, and, with a groan, dropped, back into the ditch. ' The old medicine-woman awoke after a while, missed her _ patient, and raised a howl that speedily aroused the village. Men and women. came flocking to the lodge, and speedily : _Jearned, to their surprise and terror, that the chief was miss- ing. Search was made on all sides, and it was not Jong be- fore Nip- muck-we was discovered, speechless and nearly déad, in the gully where he had fallen. ‘The poor wretch was caritad ‘to his lodge, and laid.on his couch again, and the white medicine-man was. immediately summoned to account - for the calamity that had befallen his patient. __ Eben could only do so by telling the truth; and saying that he had. left the old woman in charge of the chief, that she had. probably gone to sleep, and Nips muck-we, in a ga caused by fever, had strayed cut and fallen in a faint. ~~ ‘This story w as probable enough; but the Indian woman _stoutly denied that she had ne asleep, and as stoutly aver- ed that, the white medieinem-an had come into the lodge, had terrified her until she lost her senses, and had taken the chief up bodily, and carried him away. . ComnmicloolkkS.COlie