ing Rock Agency, surrounded by devoted
followers, dwelling in Indian ease and comfort, but rejoicing in new
opportunities for evil, Sitting Bull, said the spokesman, was holding
frequent powwows with the ghost-dancers, urging, exciting, encouraging
all, and still the Indian Bureau would not--and the army, therefore,
could not--interfere. Everywhere from the Yellowstone to the confines
of Nebraska the young braves of the allied bands were swarming forth
and holding their fierce and ominous rites, and the autumn air of the
Dakotas rang with the death song and war-whoop. The blood craze was
upon them and would not down. The messiah had appeared to chief after
chief, warning him the time had come to rise and sweep the white
invaders from the face of the earth, promising as reward long years of
plenty and prosperity, the return of the vanished buffalo, the
resurrection of their famous dead, a savage millennium the thought of
which was more than enough to array the warriors for battle. "It's
coming; it's _bound_ to come!" said the captain, in his decisive way,
"and if old Bull isn't choked off speedily we'll have work for a dozen
regiments as well as ours."

Graham listened, fascinated, yet praying his mother might not hear.
Secure in the possession of her stalwart son, full of joy in their
present and pride in his past, she chatted merrily on. Mrs. Frazier,
too, had joined them, another woman who had reason to rejoice in
Geordie's prowess at Silver Shield. They were so blithely, busily,
engaged that he presently managed to slip unobserved away and join the
little group about the speaker. Colonel Hazzard, too, was there and
held forth a cordial hand to the new-comer. Geordie's father never
betrayed half the pride in him that the colonel frankly owned to.

"This must interest you not a little," said he.

"More than I can tell you, sir," was the quick answer. "More than I
dare let mother know! But I have come for advice. I've a letter from
Mr. Connell. Read it, sir, and tell me how to go about it. Before
mother can get wind of it, I want orders to report at Niobrara."

CHAPTER XIV

A SCOUT FOR THE SIOUX

The dawn of an autumn day was breaking over a barren and desolate
landscape. The mist was rising from the silent pools of the narrow
stream that alternately lay in lazy reaches and sped leaping and
laughing in swift rapid over pebbly bed--the Mini Chaduza of the Sioux.
The sun was still far below the eastward hor