could only understand the answer by the gestures and signs that
accompanied it. From these and what followed he was able to make up a
coherent outline of the offence of which he was being accused.

It appeared that a picket of scouts had been out on the mountains
watching for enemy spies. They had captured this one in the very act
of spying upon them. He had been making signals, sending messages and
answering messages by sounds made with his lips. He carried a gun, and
was ready to use it upon them if they had not been too quick for them.
And he was disguised. It was clear that he was an Indian--one of their
Sioux enemies--who had tried to make himself look like a Paleface.
Moreover, he wore the totem sign of his chief, who was the enemy of
Falling Water.

Rube was perplexed in his effort to understand this part of the scout's
evidence.

He was not surprised that he had been mistaken for a full-blooded
Indian. Was not his mother an Indian? And had not both he and Kiddie
when they started on their camping trip dressed themselves in fringed
buckskins and designedly made themselves look as much as possible like
Indians?

He supposed that the scouts picketed on the heights had heard Kiddie's
whistle from afar and his own feeble attempt to respond. What puzzled
him most was the spokesman's declaration that he wore the totem sign of
his chief. For so he understood the scout's gestures.

Falling Water was apparently dissatisfied, for he closely questioned
the witness, whose answer, partly in the Crow tongue and partly in
pantomime, threw a flood of light upon Rube's perplexity.

Plucking a feather from his own headdress, the scout pinched the quill
and bent it over, holding it in position on Rube's head.

This, then, was the totem sign of his supposed chief. And he, Rube
Carter, was believed by these Crow Indians to be a spy of their enemy
Broken Feather!

He did not know that one of the medicine men had questioned him in the
tongue of the Sioux, which, if he were indeed one of Broken Feather's
tribe, he ought to have understood. His failure to answer was taken
for stubbornness, a sure evidence of his guilt.

Falling Water spoke, holding up a cautioning finger to impose attention
to his words. Rube guessed by his serious judicial manner that he was
passing a sentence of punishment upon him.

"It's a pity none o' you c'n understand plain, straight-forward
English," he protested. "I c'd explain in a jif