were wise to
take a look. Young warriors dashed away northeastward over the rolling
divides, and others galloped after to intermediate bluffs and ridges,
but it was well-nigh an hour before the signals came whirling back. "No
soldiers, no danger," and even then they temporized. In trailing war
bonnet, his gleaming body bare to the waist, his feathered head held
high, his nimble pony bedizened with tinsel and finery, a white "fool
flag" waving at the tip of his lance, with two young braves in
attendance, each with his little symbol of truce, Black Wolf came riding
gallantly down from the distant southward bluffs, demanding further
parley. Black Wolf had tidings worth the telling, he said. He had stood
the white man's friend and endeavored to prevent hostilities, but since
the affair of the previous night all that was hopeless, and now he must
stand by his people. His young men, he shouted, at dawn had attacked the
guard at the wood camp, and the scalps of every man, still warm and
bloody, hung at the belts of his braves, even now galloping back to
swell the ranks of their brothers. He urged the young white chief to
make no such error as had the sub-chief, the sergeant, at the camp, who
had fired upon his warriors when offered mercy. There was still time for
the young chief to consider. He was surrounded, cut off from help and
home. His brethren dare not quit the shelter of the fort to come to aid
him. They would be annihilated on the open prairie, as was the "Long
Hair" at the Little Horn a generation ago. This, then, should be the
young chief's warning and his opportunity. Let him and his men, save
one, depart in peace, leaving everything and everybody else as they were
before the young chief came. Black Wolf would await the reply. In
resonant periods, in ringing, sonorous tones, the speech of the
orator-chief had been delivered, his deep, powerful voice fairly
thundering over the valley, and echoing back from the crags of Warrior
Bluff, a mile away to the west. A spirited, barbaric group it made, that
magnificent savage with his bright-hued escort all gleaming in the
slanting sunshine, full two hundred yards away. On every little
eminence, on every side, were grouped listening bands of his braves. One
could almost hear their guttural "Ughs" of approval. One could almost
count their swarming array. Farther to the south, along the jagged line
of the barricade ridge, score upon score of blanketed squaws and
bareheaded chil