fivescore of jeering, taunting screeching warriors, at least a dozen
of them now dismounted, dancing and brandishing knife and tomahawk,
rifle or revolver, about the still writhing group rolling upon the
wooden floor,--McPhail and his assailants. Into the midst of this mad
mellay sprang the cavalryman, turning loose his horse, which animal,
urged by shrill yells and slyly administered lashings, went tearing away
over the prairie. Right at the lieutenant's back, almost as he had
fought his way with him, nozzle in hand, into the ruck of the rioting
crowd at Bluff Siding, striking out scientifically with his clinched
fists, charged young Brannan, only three days since transferred to the
agency guard. Vaulting the low rail and lunging in among the
devil-dreamers, came Sergeant Lutz and a squad of his fellow-troopers,
and in a dozen seconds, breathless and dust-begrimed, half stifled, but
practically unhurt, the agent was dragged from among the whirl of
moccasined feet and propped up, panting and swearing, against the rail,
while burly forms in trooper blue were hustling the half-raging,
half-jeering crowd of warriors off the platform. Even in the moment of
mad excitement they knew too much to use their weapons. Wise old heads
had been cautioning them against any deed of blood so long as the grass
was barely beginning to shoot. All they demanded was the instant release
of that boy, the chieftain's son, but incidentally, if McPhail insisted
on wrestling, they could not deny the Great Father's man or spare him
vigorous handling while about it. Davies had seized one brawny, muscular
throat and sent a gauntleted fist plump against the sweat-gleaming jaw
of a second brave. Brannan had backed him with half a dozen
well-delivered blows, but even these had evoked neither shot nor knife.
The instant the savages realized that it was the young commander of the
guard, they seemed to give way without further struggle, and so it
resulted that in a moment more every red-skin was off that sacred square
of board, and that a thick, deep semicircle of warriors, some few afoot,
but most of them astride their ponies, glowered in silence now at the
tall soldier who, interposing between them and the victim of their rude
horse play, stood confronting them with grave, set, indomitable look in
his pale face, on which the sweat was already starting. Behind the
officer, leaping up on the platform, were now a little squad of his men,
and McPhail, fuming