nt, though the lowered brows tightened and
teeth cut deeper into the under lip.

Dogs set up a barking at the other end of the village--a common enough
occurrence where half-starved curs roved in packs--but I could not
refrain from lounging with a show of indifference to the doorway, where
I peered through the moon-silvered dusk. As usual, the Indians with
shrill cry flew at the dogs to silence them. The noise seemed to be
annoying my companions and was certainly unnerving me, so I shut the
door and walked back to the fire.

The howl of dogs and squaws increased. I heard the angry undertone of
men's voices. A hoarse roar broke from the Mandane lodges and rolled
through the village like the sweep of coming hurricane. There was a
fleet rush, a swift pattering of something pursued running round the
rear of our lodge, with a shrieking mob of men and squaws after it. The
dogs were barking furiously and snapping at the heels of the thing,
whatever it was.

"A hostile!" exclaimed Hamilton, leaping up.

Hardly knowing what I did, I bounded towards the door and shot forward
the bolt, with a vague fear that blood might be spilled on our
threshold.

"For shame, man!" cried Father Holland, making to undo the latch.

But the words had not passed his lips when the parchment flap of the
window lifted. A voice screamed through the opening and in hurtled a
round, nameless, blood-soaked horror, rolling over and over in a red
trail, till it stopped with upturned, dead, glaring eyes and hideous,
gaping mouth, at the very feet of Hamilton.

It was the scalpless head of La Robe Noire. Our Indian had paid the
price of his own blood-lust and Diable's enmity.

Before the full enormity of the treachery--messengers murdered and
mutilated, ransom stolen and captives kept--had dawned on me, Father
Holland had broken open the door. He was rushing through the night
screaming for the Mandanes to catch the miscreant Sioux. When I turned
back, not daring to look at that awful object, Hamilton had fallen to
the hut floor in a dead faint.

* * * * *

And now may I be spared recalling what occurred on that terrible night!

Women luxuriate and men traffic in the wealth of the great west, but how
many give one languid thought to the years of bloody deeds by which the
west was won?

* * * * *

Before restoring Hamilton, it was necessary to remove that which was
unseemly; also to wa