harsh land, just a little puzzled over the complications
which he saw arising here, but dead sure of himself and intolerant of
the men with whom he was treating. That intolerance showed in his
stare as he regarded them.

There were half a dozen of the Apaches, chiefs every one of them, a
ragged group clad in a mixture of their native garb and cast-off
clothes of the white man; frowzy hair hanging to their shoulders and
bound round at the brows by soiled thin turbans. But they stood erect
and there was a dignity in the way they held their heads back, a
dignity in their immobility of feature and in their slow, grave
speech. It was the dignity of men who knew that they were leaders of
their people; who felt themselves on entire equality with the leader
of the white man's warriors; who felt the gravity of this occasion
where they had been invited into conference with this blue-clad
representative of a mighty government. Their head man was Cochise.

Like Lieutenant Bascom, he stood a pace ahead of his followers, a lean
Apache, with a thinner face than most of his tribesmen and a
remarkably high forehead. And as he looked into the eyes of the young
man in blue who had just come from the far cities of the east coast
there began to come into his own eyes the shadow of suspicion. The
talk went on; the interpreter droned out one answer after another to
his speeches, and that shadow in the eyes of Cochise deepened.

In itself the matter at issue was a small one. A settler had lost a
cow and he had accused the Apaches of stealing the animal. Young
Lieutenant Bascom had summoned the chiefs to conference and they had
come--they said--to help him find the culprit. After the manner of the
Indian, of whose troubles the passing of time is the very least, they
talked slowly, listened to the interpreter's rendition of the
lieutenant's answers, and then talked more.

They did not know the man who had stolen the cow; that was the sum
and substance of their speeches. And Lieutenant Bascom, fretting with
the passage of the hours, looked on the ragged group in their dirty
nondescript garments and chafed with fresh intolerance.

Cochise read that intolerance in the eyes of the smooth-cheeked
officer and, being an Apache, managed to conceal the suspicion in his
own eyes. He did not want trouble with the white man. He had never yet
had trouble with soldier or settler. Ever since he had been a chief
among the Chiracahua Apaches he had held do