to exchange for merchandise, ammunition, and the "spirit
water." Among the others there presently appeared a band of renegade
Sioux--the exiles, as they called themselves--under White Lodge, whose
father, Little Crow, had been a leader in the outbreak of 1862. Now the
great warchief was dead, and his people were prisoners or fugitives.
The shrewd Scotch trader, McLeod, soon discovered that the Sioux were
skilled hunters, and therefore he exerted himself to befriend them,
as well as to encourage a feeling of good will between them and the
Canadian tribes who were accustomed to make the old fort their summer
rendezvous.

Now the autumn had come, after a long summer of feasts and dances, and
the three tribes broke up and dispersed as usual in various directions.
White Lodge had twin daughters, very handsome, whose ears had been kept
burning with the proposals of many suitors, but none had received any
definite encouragement. There were one or two who would have been quite
willing to forsake their own tribes and follow the exiles had they
not feared too much the ridicule of the braves. Even Angus McLeod, the
trader's eldest son, had need of all his patience and caution, for he
had never seen any woman he admired so much as the piquant Magaskawee,
called The Swan, one of these belles of the forest.

The Sioux journeyed northward, toward the Mouse River. They had wintered
on that stream before, and it was then the feeding ground of large herds
of buffalo. When it was discovered that the herds were moving westward,
across the Missouri, there was no little apprehension. The shrewd
medicine-man became aware of the situation, and hastened to announce his
prophecy:

"The Great Mystery has appeared to me in a dream! He showed me men with
haggard and thin faces. I interpret this to mean a scarcity of food
during the winter."

The chief called his counselors together and set before them the dream
of the priest, whose prophecy, he said, was already being fulfilled in
part by the westward movement of the buffalo. It was agreed that they
should lay up all the dried meat they could obtain; but even for this
they were too late. The storms were already at hand, and that winter was
more severe than any that the old men could recall in their traditions.
The braves killed all the small game for a wide circuit around the camp,
but the buffalo had now crossed the river, and that country was not
favorable for deer. The more enterprising youn