“Outside.”
“Bring ’em in, Claude,” he said to his interpreter. “You talk with these people and find out what it is all about.”
In the end he ordered his team and with Claude drove away to town, a long, hard, dusty road. He reached the hotel that night too late to call on the sheriff and was forced to wait till morning. The little rag of a daily paper had used the shooting as a text for its well-worn discourse. “Sweep these marauding fiends out of the State or off the face of the earth,” it said editorially. “Get them out of the path of civilization. Scenes of disorder like that of yesterday are sure to be repeated so long as these red pets of the Government are allowed to cumber the earth. The State ought to slaughter them like wolves.”
Cook read this with a flush of hot blood in his face. He was quite familiar with such articles, but he went to bed that night feeling more keenly than ever in his life the difficult position he was called upon to fill. To race hatred these people had added greed for the Shi-an-nay lands. In this editorial was vented the savage hate of thousands of white men. There could be no doubt of it—and were it not for a fear of the general government the terms of its hatred would have been carried out long ago.
In the early morning he took Claude and went to the jail.
The sheriff met him suavely. “Oh—certainly captain—you can see him,” he said, but his tone was insulting.
When the agent and his interpreter entered his cell Howling Wolf looked up with a low cry of pleasure. He took Cook’s hand in both of his and said slowly:
“My friend, take me away from here. I cannot bear to be locked up. I have done nothing. When I showed my paper the cattlemen laughed. When I reached my hand in friendship they spat upon it. This made my heart very bitter but I did not fight.”
When he had secured Wolf’s story in detail, the Major said, “Do not worry, Wolf, I will see that you are released.”
To the sheriff he said: “What are you holding this man for?”