ey had been
irresponsible madmen, temporarily cruelty-surfeited, they resumed their
journey. Single file, each footstep of those who followed fair in the
print of the leader, a long, long line of ghostly, undulatory shadows,
forming the most treacherous deadly serpent that ever inhabited earth,
they moved eastward until they reached the bank of the swift little
river; then turned north, leaving the abandoned, desolated settlement,
the ruined cornfields, as tokens of their handiwork, as a message to
other predatory bands who might follow, as a challenge to the white man
who they knew would return. As passed the slow hours toward morning they
moved swiftly and more swiftly. The gliding walk became a dog trot,
almost a lope; their arms swung back and forth in unison, the pat, pat
of their moccasined feet was like the steady drip of eaves from a summer
rain, the rustle of their passing bodies against the dense vegetation a
soft accompaniment. Autochthonous as they had appeared they disappeared.
Night and distance swallowed them up. But for a trampled, ruined
grainfield, the smouldering ruins of what had once been a house, the
glaring white of two naked bodies in the starlight against the
background of dark earth, it was as though they had not come. But for
this, and one other thing--a single sound, repeated again and again,
dulled, muffled as though coming from the earth itself.

"Daddy! Daddy! I want you." Then repeated with a throb in its depths
that spoke louder than words. "Daddy, come! I'm afraid!"

CHAPTER III

DISCOVERY

More than a mere name was Fort Yankton. Original in construction, as
necessity ever induces the unusual, it was nevertheless formidable. To
the north was a typical entrenchment with a ditch, and a parapet eight
feet high. To the east was a double board wall with earth tamped
between: a solid curb higher than the head of a tall man. Completing the
square, to the south and west stretched a chain of oak posts set close
together and pierced, as were the other walls of the stockade, by
numerous portholes. Within the enclosure, ark of refuge for settlers
near and afar, was a large blockhouse wherein congregated, mingled and
intermingled, ate, slept, and had their being, as diverse a gathering of
humans as ever graced a single structure even in this land of myriad
types. Virtually the entire population of frontier Yankton was there.
Likewise the settlers from near-by Bon Homme. An adventurer fro