far-seeing, held wisely back, even while around the prostrate chief
there raged for a brief, hot, furious moment a wild babel of threat and
execration, a mad whirl of brandishing knives and pistols and naked red
limbs and brawny arms in dusty blue, Hawk and two other stalwart Sioux
had thrown themselves between avenging blows and the young white chief,
standing afoot now with pale, set face, over his writhing victim. Lutz
and his men, lunging in among the lighter ponies, bore them back by
sheer force of weight. 'Only one or two shots were heard; even in that
frantic turmoil friend and foe alike seemed to realize that a battle
must be avoided so long as each side held possession of its own. And
then from the outskirts came loud yells of warning. By fives and tens
the mounted warriors melted hurriedly away, and presently all the broad
prairie to the eastward, back toward the lodges from which they came,
was alive with circling, darting, screaming red-skins, keeping up their
shrill appeal to brethren still hot-handed in the struggle for out from
behind the curtain of the agency corral swept the long column of
galloping horse under its curtaining cloud of dust, and down at full
speed came the whole squadron, far more than Red Dog's band dare tackle
in heady fight. Out from beneath his struggling pony they dragged him,
bleeding and bedaubed with sweat and paint and blood, and when
presently as the long skirmish line of Cranston's troop swept over the
spot and drove before it all the mounted warriors, only two or three of
the faithful remained to share the fortunes of their fallen chief, for
like Thunder Hawk, Red Dog was the prisoner, not of the Great Father's
agent, who was somewhere far to the rear, but of the soldier chief of
the cantonments, who came galloping up in the wake of the cavalry,
wrathful, if anything, that the whole thing was over without a fight.

And then, and not until nearly ten minutes after he had downed his man,
was it noticed that Mr. Davies had not recovered color, that he was too
faint to remount his horse.

"What is it, lad?" murmured Cranston, with keen anxiety in his eyes.

"I'm stabbed, captain. I--think you'd better not let Mrs. Davies know."

But Davies need not have worried on that score. When a little later they
bore him, faint, unconscious from loss of blood, to his own roof at the
agency, there was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's
tears,--Mira had fled with the McPhai