e just had my ear to the ground and I heard an awful roaring
somewhere." Trench, who had been sprawling lazily in the shadows, now
declared, "Say, I'd hate to be penned into this place so I couldn't get
out. There's no skinning up that rock wall even if a fellow could swim
the river, and I can't," and the big guard stretched himself on the
ground again.

"What's that old story about the Kickapoos here?" somebody asked.
"Dennie Saxon knows it. Tell us about it, Dennie, AND THEN WE'LL ALL GO
HOME." The last words were half-sung.

"Be swift, Dennie, be quite swift. I heard that noise again. I'm afraid
it's a stampede of wild horses." Trench, who had had his ear to the
ground, sat up suddenly. But nobody paid any attention to him.

"Come, Denmark Saxon, let's close the day in song and story. You tell
the story and then I'll sing the song," somebody declared.

"Aw-w-w!" a prolonged chorus. "Make your story long, Dennie; make it
lengthy."

"Don't you do it, Dennie. I tell you this ground is shaking. I feel it,"
Trench insisted.

"Say, who's got the bromo-seltzer? The right guard's supper is n't
treating him right. Go ahead, Dennie," the crowd urged.

They were all in a circle about the fire. Its flickering glow lighted
Vic Burleigh's rugged face, and gleamed in his auburn hair. Elinor sat
between him and Vincent Burgess. Dennie was just beyond Vincent, who
noted incidentally the play of light and shadow on the blowsy ripples of
her hair that night and remembered it all on a day long afterward.

"Once upon a time," Dennie began,

there was a beautiful Kickapoo Indian maiden--"

"Yep, any Kickapoo's a beaut. Hurry up, Dennie. I hear something
coming." It was the big lazy guard again.

"Oh! Vic Burleigh, sit on his prostrate form. Go on, Dennie," the
company insisted, and she continued.

"Her name was The Fawn of the Morning Light, her best lover was Swift
Elk."

"You be Mrs. Swift Elk--" but Vic Burleigh's arm about Trench's throat
choked his words.

"And there was a wily Sioux, named Red Fox, who loved the Fawn and
wanted her to marry him. She wouldn't do it. The Kickapoos were heap-big
grafters, and they had this old Corral full of ponies and junk they had
relieved other tribes of caring for. And the only way to get in here,
besides falling over the bluff and becoming a pin-cushion for poisoned
arrows, was to come in by the shallows in the river where the ford is
now above old Lagonda's pool, and most Indian