out and drive
away such cattle as were passably fat and presumably tender, leaving to
the silent loyals only a miserable batch of beeves which Lieutenant
Boynton described as "dried on the hoof." The agent said he couldn't
help it, "Red Dog and the likes of him are now high in favor at
Washington. They and their fellows could have me removed in a minute if
I interfered, and they know it. There is no lie at my expense their
interpreters wouldn't tell the inspectors, and against so many witnesses
what could I do?"

"Do!" said Boynton, indignantly. "Do your duty, and I'll back you up.
I'll testify to the truth."

And then the agent smiled sadly, but scornfully, and said another
truism. "What good would that do? From Sheridan down, what army
officer's statement has any weight whatever with the Indian
Bureau,--when it isn't what it wants?"

"Well," said Boynton, "it's a damned shame, and I mean to make a formal
report to department headquarters at once."

And the agent said he wished he would, and Boynton did, but before that
document could reach Omaha there were other and more serious troubles.
Two Lance was the name given the chief of the little band that had stood
fast with Spotted Tail, and Two Lance had begged that he and his people
might be allowed to go back to where most of the Brules lived, at the
old home on the White River. "This is no place for us," said he. "We are
poor, hungry, ragged, almost naked. We are jeered at. Even our maidens
are insulted by these our own people because we were taught to remain
true to the Great Father and take no part in the war. Now, behold, they
who killed his soldiers, murdered his settlers, and ravished his women
are fat and strong and rich. Their ponies are as the herds of buffalo in
our fathers' day, and we who served the great White Chief and protected
his children, we are a shame and a scorn. Let us go to him who never
broke a promise or told a lie and he will right us. Let us go back to
Sintogaliska--to Spotted Tail." But the agent said he had no authority.
It would be another moon before he could get it, and it might not come
then. If they pulled up stakes and went anyhow he would have to send the
white chief Boynton with his soldiers to fetch them back; and when Red
Dog and Kills Asleep heard of this they rode to the village of Two Lance
and jeered him anew and called him "White Heart" and "No Lance," and
some of Red Dog's young men said worse things to some of the Brule