, however, and as often as the angry interpreter drove her
off, came circling saucily back--to halt in the path of the coming
braves. The string by the willows, the hobbled horses and the gentle
free ones, were frightened by her into stamping about. But the whisky
biting their noses killed the hated scent that was nearing. Not so with
the cayuse. She caught it. For a moment she waited, head high, ears
a-quiver, nostrils spread. Matthews warned the Indians. They did not
hear. As they raced on, the mare gave a snort of terror, wheeled, and
launched herself full against the end animal of the string.

The tethered horses set back upon their ropes, trampling each other and
pulling themselves free. The gentle ones, thoroughly scared, went
flinging away with them. While the hobbled, with no cow-pony respect for
rope, made up a mad, plunging rear.

Consternation seized the Sioux. They were without boats, without
weapons, without horses. They cursed. They threatened Matthews.

"Cross! cross!" he cried. "Your bows are in my wood lodge. The soldiers
have no horses, and no boats. They cannot swim the river. You will be
safe."

There was no other way.

"Wind-swift, my brothers," bade Lame Foot.

The Indians rushed back to where hammers had been ringing for days past.
They tore away boards of the scaffold. Then, returning to the river,
they dropped in.

Matthews called after them. "Remember your promise," he said; "and do
not drink the water-that-burns in my lodge."

There was no answer.

And now the interpreter took thought for himself. At sundown he had
lusted for the night's doing. But the heart was gone out of him. Even
before the stampede, the whole affair had assumed monster proportions.
He had begun to think of the murdered, and of the maiming, and had
wished himself well out of it. Now, with no horse to carry him across
to safety, there seemed to face him only discovery and punishment.

"Well, they drove me to it," he complained. "This wouldn't 'a' happened
if they'd give me a square deal." He was wrenching with all his might at
a section of the scaffold platform. "I wanted to be decent, and they
treated me like a dog."

With this, he ran down the river bank and launched his frail raft.
"Anyhow," he said, "I'll git out o' this jus' as fast as water'll take
me!"

CHAPTER XXXV

THE LAST WARNING

Thrown down by a sounding-board of inky clouds, the alarm shots at
Brannon, the shouting, the reports of th