Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/97

---

feathered head of a jealous buck could always be seen peeping from the high grass and keeping constant watch over the girl. Wakalona, like the other women, worked in the fields when there were any fields to be worked, and at other times made herself useful about her father's tent. Her mother was dead. She was the only child her father had, and he was very proud of her. In a battle between the Sioux and the Pawnees near Ogallala the Sioux had captured Wakalona and her father, and Buffalo Bill had rescued her, almost miraculously, from four of their foemen, three of whom they had slain. After that the Sioux had marked Red Fox and his daughter as their own, and many lures had been set to ensnare them. At North Platte Red Fox had planted a little field of corn, and it was here, when the sun was low, that Slide used to woo the dark-eyed Princess of the Platte. I used to watch her working in the field, and when we whistled she would always pause in her labors and look up to make sure that it was the whistle of the 49, although she never looked up for the whistle of any other engine. I think, as she began to lose