."

"Logical!" echoed Haines again. He held the regulation Eastern view that
the Indian knows nothing but the three blind appetites.

"You'd know better," remarked Stirling, "if you'd been fighting 'em for
fifteen years. They're as shrewd as AEsop's fables."

Just then two Indians appeared round a bluff--one old and shabby, the
other young and very gaudy--riding side by side.

"That's Cheschapah," said Stirling. "That's the agitator in all his
feathers. His father, you see, dresses more conservatively."

The feathered dandy now did a singular thing. He galloped towards the
two officers almost as if to bear them down, and, steering much too
close, flashed by yelling, amid a clatter of gravel.

"Nice manners," commented Haines. "Seems to have a chip on his
shoulder."

But Stirling looked thoughtful. "Yes," he muttered, "he has a chip."

Meanwhile the shabby father was approaching. His face was mild and sad,
and he might be seventy. He made a gesture of greeting. "How!" he said,
pleasantly, and ambled on his way.

"Now there you have an object-lesson," said Stirling. "Old Pounded Meat
has no chip. The question is, are the fathers or the sons going to run
the Crow Nation?"

"Why did the young chap have a dog on his saddle?" inquired Haines.

"I didn't notice it. For his supper, probably--probably he's getting up
a dance. He is scheming to be a chief. Says he is a medicine-man, and
can make water boil without fire; but the big men of the tribe take no
stock in him--not yet. They've seen soda-water before. But I'm told this
water-boiling astonishes the young."

"You say the old chiefs take no stock in him _yet_?"

"Ah, that's the puzzle. I told you just now Indians could reason."

"And I was amused."

"Because you're an Eastern man. I tell you, Haines, if it wasn't my
business to shoot Indians I'd study them."

"You're a crank," said Haines.

But Stirling was not a crank. He knew that so far from being a mere
animal, the Indian is of a subtlety more ancient than the Sphinx. In his
primal brain--nearer nature than our own--the directness of a child
mingles with the profoundest cunning. He believes easily in powers of
light and darkness, yet is a sceptic all the while. Stirling knew this;
but he could not know just when, if ever, the young charlatan Cheschapah
would succeed in cheating the older chiefs; just when, if ever, he would
strike the chord of their superstition. Till then they would reason that
the