open space that would not permit an enemy
to approach through ambush, and beyond that the forest.

The tepees stood in a great circle, and, although Dick did not
know it, their camps were always pitched according to rule, each
gens or clan having its regular place in the circle. The tribe
of the Mendewahkantons--a leading one of the Seven Fireplaces or
Council Fires of the great Sioux nation--was subdivided into
seven gentes or clans; the Kiyukas, or Breakers, so called
because they disregarded the general marriage law and married
outside their own clan; the Que-mini-tea, or Mountain Wood and
Water people; the Kap'oja, or Light Travelers; the Maxa-yuta-cui,
the People who Eat no Grease; the Queyata-oto-we, or the People
of the Village Back from the River; the Oyata Citca, the Bad
Nation, and the Tita-otowe, the People of the Village on the
Prairie.

Each clan was composed of related families, and all this great
tribe, as the boys learned later, had once dwelled around Spirit
Lake, Minnesota, their name meaning Mysterious Lake Dwellers,
but had been pushed westward years before by the advancing wave
of white settlement. This was now a composite village,
including parts of every gens of the Mendewahkantons, but there
were other villages of the same tribe scattered over a large
area.

When Dick and Albert reached the northern end of the village they
saw a great number of Indian ponies, six or seven hundred
perhaps, grazing in a wide grassy space and guarded by half-grown
Indian boys.

"Dick," said Albert, "if we only had a dozen of those we could go
back and get our furs."

"Yes," said Dick, "if we had the ponies, if we knew where we are
now, if we were free of the Sioux village, and if we could find
the way to our valley, we might do what you say."

"Yes, it does take a pile of 'ifs,'" said Albert, laughing, "and
so I won't expect it. I'll try to be resigned."

So free were they from any immediate restriction that it almost
seemed to them that they could walk away as they chose, up the
valley and over the hills and across the plains. How were the
Sioux to know that these two would keep their promised word?
But both became conscious again of those watchful eyes,
ferocious, like the eyes of man-eating wild beasts, and both
shivered a little as they turned back into the great circle of
bark teepees.

Chapter XVI
The Gathering of the Sioux

Dick and Albert abode nearly two weeks in the great lodge o