les of four rifles following them steadily, a sight which to them
carried a certain significance. The line broke and wheeled,
scattering, circling, still rising and falling, streaming in hair and
feathers, and now attended with a wild discord of high-keyed yells.

"Keep still, boys; don't shoot!" cried Franklin instinctively. "Wait!"

It was good advice. The mingling, shifting line, obedient to some loud
word of commando swept again up near to the front of the barricade,
then came to a sudden halt with half the forefeet off the ground. The
ponies shuffled and fidgeted, and the men still yelled and called out
unintelligible sounds, but the line halted. It parted, and there rode
forward an imposing figure.

Gigantic, savage, stern, clad in the barbaric finery of his race, his
body nearly nude, his legs and his little feet covered with bead-laden
buckskin, his head surmounted with a horned war bonnet whose eagle
plumes trailed down the pony's side almost to the ground, this Indian
headman made a picture not easily to be forgotten nor immediately to be
despised. He sat his piebald stallion with no heed to its restive
prancing. Erect, immobile as a statue, such was the dignity of his
carriage, such the stroke of his untamed eye, that each man behind the
barricade sank lower and gripped his gun more tightly. This was a
personality not to be held in any hasty or ill-advised contempt.

The Indian walked his horse directly up to the barricade, his eye
apparently scorning to take in its crude details.

"Me, White Calf!" he exclaimed in English, like the croak of a parrot,
striking his hand upon his breast with a gesture which should have been
ludicrous or pompous, but was neither. "Me, White Calf!" said the
chief again, and lifted the medal which lay upon his breast. "Good.
White man come. White man go. Me hunt, now!"

He swept his arm about in a gesture which included the horizon, and
indicated plainly his conviction that all the land belonged to him and
his own people. So he stood, silent, and waiting with no nervousness
for the diplomacy of the others.

Franklin stepped boldly out from the barricade and extended his hand.
"White Calf, good friend," said he. The Indian took his hand without a
smile, and with a look which Franklin felt go through him. At last the
chief grunted out something, and, dismounting, seated himself down upon
the ground, young men taking his horse and leading it away. Others,
appar