ated.
"I'm getting nervous, and I want Jerome where he can hear me if I call
to him."

Perceiving that Elsie shared this feeling in no small degree, Jennie
soberly conveyed their wish to Curtis.

"Very well, we'll move over. It will take but a moment."

As she heard the men driving the tent-pegs close beside her bed Mrs.
Parker sighed peacefully.

"_Now_ I can sleep. There is no comfort like a man in case of wolves,
Indians, and burglars," and the fact that the men were laughing did not
disturb her.

With a little shock, Elsie realized that Curtis and not Lawson was in
her mind as her defender. Of course, he was in command; that accounted
for it.

Nevertheless, as she listened to the murmur of their voices she detected
herself waiting for Curtis's crisp, clear bass, and not for the nasal
tenor of the man whose ring she wore. Her mind was filled, too, with the
dramatic figure the young officer made as he sat in gesture-talk with
his Tetong wards. In case of trouble the safest place on all the
reservation would be by his side, for his people loved and trusted him.
She did not go to sleep easily; the excitement, the strangeness of being
in a tent, kept her alert long after Jennie and Mrs. Parker were
breathing tranquilly on their cots.

One hears everything from a tent. It seems to stand in the midst of the
world. It is like being in a diving-bell under water. Life goes on
almost uninterruptedly. The girl heard a hundred obscure, singular,
sibilant sounds, as of serpents conferring. Mysterious footsteps
advanced, paused, retreated. Whispered colloquies arose among the
leaves, giving her heart disquiet. Every unfamiliar sound was a threat.
The voices of birds and beasts no longer interested her--they scared
her; and, try as she would to banish these fancies, her nerves thrilled
with every rush of the wind. It was deep night before she dropped
asleep.

XVII

A FLUTE, A DRUM, AND A MESSAGE

Elsie dreamed she was at the theatre. The opera was "Il Trovatore," and
at the moment when the prison song--that worn yet ever-mournful
cry--should have pulsed forth; but in its stead another strain came
floating from afar, a short phrase equally sad, which sank slowly, as a
fragment of cloud descends from sky to earth to become tears of dew on
the roses. Over and over again it was repeated, so sad, so sweet, so
elemental, it seemed that the pain of all love's vain regret was in it,
longing and sorrow and despair, wi