torture you?"

He grunted a ferocious negative.

"You got away too quick for them?"

An affirmative grunt.

"Le Grand Diable--did you see him?"

At that name, his white teeth snapped shut, and from the depths of the
Indian's throat came the vicious snarl of an enraged wolf.

"Come," I coaxed, "tell me. How long since you left the Sioux?"

"Walkee--walkee--walkee--one sleep," and rising, he enacted a hobbling
gait across the cabin in unison with the rhythmic utterance of his
words.

"Walkee--walkee--walkee--one."

"Traveled at night!" I interrupted. "Two nights! You couldn't do it in
two nights!"

"Walkee--walkee--walkee--one sleep," he repeated.

"Three nights!"

Four times he hobbled across the floor, which meant he had come afoot
the whole distance, traveling only at night.

Sitting down, he began in a low monotone relating how he had returned to
La Robe Noire with the additional ransom demanded by Le Grand Diable.
The "pig Sioux, more gluttonous than the wolverine, more treacherous
than the mountain cat," had come out to receive them with hootings. The
plunder was taken, "as a dead enemy is picked by carrion buzzards." He,
himself, was dragged from his horse and bound like a slave squaw. La
Robe Noire had been stripped naked, and young men began piercing his
chest with lances, shouting, "Take that, man who would scalp the
Iroquois! Take that, enemy to the Sioux! Take that, dog that's friend to
the white man!" Then had La Robe Noire, whose hands were bound, sprung
upon his torturers and as the trapped badger snaps the hand of the
hunter so had he buried his teeth in the face of a boasting Sioux.

Here, Little Fellow's teeth clenched shut in savage imitation. Then was
Le Grand Diable's knife unsheathed. More, my messenger could not see;
for a Sioux bandaged his eyes. Another tied a rope round his neck. Thus,
like a dead stag, was he pulled over the ground to a wigwam. Here he lay
for many "sleeps," knowing not when the great sun rose and when he sank.
Once, the lodges became very still, like many waters, when the wind
slumbers and only the little waves lap. Then came one with the soft,
small fingers of a white woman and gently, scarcely touching him, as the
spirits rustle through the forest of a dark night, had these hands cut
the rope around his neck, and unbound him. A whisper in the English
tongue, "Go--run--for your life! Hide by day! Run at night!"

The skin of the tent wall was lifted by the s