Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/100

88 and when he straightened up he looked all about him and said, 'Sioux'. I brought a white light from the locomotive and, by the light of it, the wily Indian made out that two of the hated tribe had slipped up behind the helpless girl and seized her and carried her away. Presently he brought a blade of corn to me and upon it there was a tiny drop of blood, and yet he insisted that his daughter had not been killed. Later he assured me that she had not been carried, but had walked away taking a different direction from that taken by the Sioux. Now I saw it all. She had heard our whistle and while she waited for her lover, the pantherlike Sioux had stolen upon her.

"What mental anguish must have been hers when she realized that, instead of the protecting arms of her fair god, the arms of murderers were around her. Love, like the locomotive, is a great civilizer. Wakalona had tasted the joy of love, and life had become dear to her. The past, for her, was veiled in dark mystery, the future was little better, but already she had begun to feel that beyond it all there must be a brighter and better world. Once she had asked