As he finished his story Big Elk put away his pipe abstractedly, as though his mind yet dwelt on the past. His hearers were silent and very serious. He had touched the deepest chord in the red man’s soul—the chord which vibrates when the Great Spirit speaks to him in dreams.
LONE WOLF’S OLD GUARD
LONE WOLF’S OLD GUARD
Now it happened that Lone Wolf’s camp was on the line between the land of the Cheyennes and the home of his own people, the Kiowas, but he did not know this. He had lived there long, and the white man’s maps were as unimportant to him as they had been to the Cheyennes. When he moved there he considered it to be his—a gift direct from the Creator—with no prior rights to be overstepped.
But the Consolidated Cattle Company, having secured the right to enclose a vast pasture, cared nothing for any red man’s claim, provided they stood in with the government. A surveying party was sent out to run lines for fences.
Lone Wolf heard of these invaders while they were at work north of him, and learned in some mysterious way that they were to come down the Elk and cut through his camp. To his friend John, the interpreter, he sent these words:
“The white man must not try to build a fence across my land. I will fight if he does. Washington is not behind this thing. He would not build a fence through my lines without talking with me. I have sent to the agent of the Kiowas, he knows nothing about it—it is all a plan of the cattlemen to steal my lands. Tell them that we have smoked over this news—we have decided. This fence will not be built.”
When “Johnny Smoker” brought this stern message to the camp of the surveyors some of them promptly threw up their hands. Jim Bellows, scout and interpreter, was among these, and his opinion had weight, for he wore his hair long and posed as an Indian fighter of large experience.