nditions, and they always meet me half-way."

"Supper is ready," called Jennie, and his audience rose.

While still at meat, the drum, which had been sounding at intervals,
suddenly took on a wilder energy, followed immediately by a high,
shrill, yelping call, which was instantly augmented by a half-dozen
others, all as savage and startling as the sudden burst of howling from
a pack of wolves. This clamor fell away into a deep, throbbing chant,
only to rise again to the yelping, whimpering cries with which it began.

Every woman stiffened with terror, with wide eyes questioning Curtis.
"What is all that?"

"The opening chorus," he explained, much amused. "A song of the chase."

The dusk was beginning to fall, and the tepees, with their small,
sparkling fires close beside, and the shadowy, blanketed forms
assembling slowly, silently, gave a wonderful remoteness and wildness to
the scene. To Curtis it was quite like the old-time village. The husky
voice of the aged crier seemed like a call from out of the years
primeval before the white race with its devastating energy and its
killing problems had appeared in the east. The artist in Elsie, now
fully awake, dominated the daughter of wealth. "Oh, this is beautiful! I
never expected to see anything so primitive."

Knowing that his guests were eager to view it all, Curtis led the way
towards the dance-lodge. Elsie was moved to take her place beside him,
but checked herself and turned to Lawson, leaving Mrs. Parker to walk at
the Captain's elbow.

To the ears of the city dwellers the uproar was appalling--full of
murder and sudden death. As they approached the lodge the frenzied
booming of the drum, the wild, yelping howls, the shrill whooping,
brought up in their minds all the stories of dreadful deeds they had
ever read, and Parker said to Jennie:

"Do you really think the Captain will be able to control them?"

Jennie laughed. "I'm used to this clamor; it's only their way of
singing."

Elsie said: "They must be flourishing bloody scalping-knives in there;
it is direful."

"Wait and see," said Lawson.

The dance-house was a large octagonal hut built of pine logs, partly
roofed with grass and soil. It was lighted by a leaping fire in the
centre, and by four lanterns on the walls, and as Curtis and his party
entered, the clamor (in their honor) redoubled. In a first swift glance
Elsie apprehended only a confused, jingling, fluttering mass of color--a
chaos of le